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BOSTON CATHOLICS

A HISTORY OF THE CHURCH AND ITS PEOPLE

A well-crafted local history that moves beyond institutional growth to capture the spirit of the people in the pews. O—Connor has made a career of Boston history (The Boston Irish, 1995; Civil War Boston, 1997) and teaches at a Catholic college, so it seems only natural that he should eventually synthesize these interests into a book about the city’s most conspicuous religion. He follows the Church’s rise from a minority sect despised by the Puritans, through its tentative acceptance after the Revolution, to its quashing again by the resurgent “nativism” of the 1840s and ’50s, when tens of thousands of Irish fled the Potato Famine by teeming onto Boston’s shores. In the late 19th century, Boston’s Irish turned inward somewhat, building their own institutions, such as churches, parochial schools, and hospitals. They also faced a renewed campaign of ethnic opposition—not from the Old Guard this time, but from the new Italian and southeast European immigrants who began arriving in droves in the 1880s. (O—Connor can be faulted for focusing overmuch on the Irish experience, neglecting these other Catholic immigrant groups.) By the 20th century, Catholics, especially the Irish, dominated local politics, symbolized by the election of JFK’s grandfather John F. Fitzgerald as Boston’s mayor. O—Connor traces how WWII stimulated Catholicism’s numeric growth just as it did for Protestants (from 1944 to 1960, the number of Boston Catholics was growing by 50,000—60,000 per year). O—Connor also demonstrates the short-lived nature of this surge by including graphs depicting the archdiocese’s decline in priests, schools, and other institutions since the 1970s. However, the cycle of immigration and renewal seems to be repeating itself. Southeast Asian immigrants are filling the empty parishes, and the archdiocese now offers Mass in 15 different languages. Strong overall, replete with local texture, and geared toward the general reader. (33 b&w photos, not seen)

Pub Date: Oct. 30, 1998

ISBN: 1-55553-359-0

Page Count: 338

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1998

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KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON

THE OSAGE MURDERS AND THE BIRTH OF THE FBI

Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.

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Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.

During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.

Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.

Pub Date: April 18, 2017

ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017

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NIGHT

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...

Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children. 

He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions. 

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.

Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006

ISBN: 0374500010

Page Count: 120

Publisher: Hill & Wang

Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006

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