For Professor Sowell (Sociology, UCLA) ethnic America presents "a story of many very different heritages. . . the story of the human spirit in its many guises." Yet underneath the story lies the moral—never clearly stated—that America is truly the land of opportunity. In his all-too-rapid summarizing of ethnic histories ("Jewish Americans Today" receives less than two pages), Sowell searches out evidence (almost all from secondary sources) to present ethnicity in favorable light. Thus, the Irish may have developed their urban political machines, but "they were by no means the originators of corrupt politics. They were simply more successful at it, and performed with a warmer human touch." The Germans "quickly established a reputation for hard work, thoroughness, and thriftiness" and became renowned as "the nation's best dirt farmers." While Jews originally had to live in overcrowded tenements like other immigrant arrivals, their cleanliness protected them from some slum diseases; and, while they saw education as a route to success, their co-arrivals, the Italians, devalued education but got ahead through their willingness to work harder. The real success story, though, is presented by the Japanese, "emerging from war-time internment to earn median incomes 32 percent above the national average." With the blacks, Chicanos, and Puerto Ricans, Sowell faces a more difficult task in demonstrating progress, but rises to it. "Their rates of progress" he reminds us, "look very different if measured from 1619, 1865, 1900, or 1954." Assuming the long perspective, he sees the black race as a whole as having "moved from a position of utter destitution—in money, knowledge, and rights—to a place alongside other groups emerging in the great struggles of life." For Puerto Ricans and Chicanos as well, it all depends on your perspective. Most mainland Puerto Rican adults are still first generation, and "Few groups in American history could claim more progress in as short a span. . . ." Chicanos similarly have rapidly moved "from the rural Mexican cultures of the 1920s to modern urban America. . . a very long journey in human terms." Sowell seldom mentions the melting pot, but that's essentially what we have here: the old melting pot, by now a rather dull dish. If it's the human drama of ethnicity you want, try Morrison and Zabusky's American Mosaic (1980). If it's provocative analysis 180 degrees opposed to Sowell's self-congratulatory and depoliticized treatment, try Stephen Steinberg's The Ethnic Myth (p. 276). The account here borders on being yet another apologia for benign neglect.
Pub Date: July 10, 1981
ISBN: 0465020755
Page Count: 370
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1981
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
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
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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