A fascinating, well-told story by an author fully committed to his subject. Egan’s impeccable research, uncomplicated...
The story of Thomas Meagher (1823-1867), an Irishman radicalized by the famine who became a hero on three continents.
New York Times columnist Egan (Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher: The Epic Life and Immortal Photographs of Edward Curtis, 2012, etc.), winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, could have written multiple books about Meagher’s broad successes. He was a natural-born orator, and his gift encouraged his fellow Irish in hopes of freedom sooner, rather than “in time,” as per the Great Liberator, Daniel O’Connell. The author imparts the desperation of the starving families while pointing to the many wealthy Catholics and Protestants who worked to achieve liberty. During the Great Famine, England exported 1.5 billion pounds of grain as well as more beef than any other colony, while millions starved without the blighted potatoes that sustained them. After a fiery speech in Conciliation Hall and a betrayal by John Balfe, the English arrested Meagher and a handful of others for speaking out. Meagher was sent to Tasmania, and while he was not put into forced labor, he had limited contact with his fellow Irish. Discovering that the traitor Balfe had been given a land grant, he sent an anonymous series of letters to the press, exposing his perfidy. Eventually, with help from his wealthy father, he escaped. His reputation preceded him, and his welcome in America was riotous. His leadership and oration made him a great recruiter of his fellow countrymen during the Civil War. A different side of the Civil War emerges as the author describes the frustrations of war under Gen. George McClellan and the devotion of Meagher’s men. Exhausted after Chancellorsville, Meagher resigned and moved to Montana with his wife, where he fought yet again against a rabid vigilance committee.
A fascinating, well-told story by an author fully committed to his subject. Egan’s impeccable research, uncomplicated readability, and flowing narrative reflect his deep knowledge of a difficult and complex man.Pub Date: March 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-544-27288-0
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Galvanic, hour-by-hour account that traces the events leading up to and following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Pennsylvania State Univ. arts-and-humanities professor Weintraub (Victoria, 1987, etc.), who recounted the final days of the Great War in A Stillness Heard Round the World (1985), details how the simultaneous Japanese attacks on American and British forces in the Pacific and Asia suddenly plunged millions into arguably the first truly global conflict. With brief snapshots, he illustrates how both ordinary and powerful people experience the mounting horror in far-flung locales—Washington, Manila, Moscow, Tokyo, Tobruk, Singapore, London, Berlin, and, of course, Hawaii. Cryptographers and junior naval functionaries sense something amiss, only to see their warnings ignored by top brass; an urgent plea for peace from FDR to Hirohito is delayed for ten hours by Japanese warmongers; a group of scientists meet in a coffee shop to discuss the atomic bomb; German forces bog down in the Soviet Union and North Africa; Hitler pops open champagne to celebrate Pearl Harbor, then later takes an ominous step closer to the Final Solution with the ``Night and Fog Decree.'' This structure emphasizes the dizzying speed of events, accurately mirroring the chaos. One caveat: Weintraub's research seems herculean, but his skeletal endnotes list only his primary sources, not secondary sources, for the interested reader. A dazzling example of historical narrative, revealing the almost infinite variety of human responses—courage, fear, intelligence, idiocy, outrage, and sorrow—as the world trembled on the brink of war. (B&w photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Sept. 10, 1991
ISBN: 0-525-93344-1
Page Count: 716
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1991
The overly prosaic and gossipy journal of a 16-year-old Jewish girl and fierce Confederate patriot. Solomon was the second oldest of six surviving girls in an upper-middle-class Sephardic merchant family in New Orleans. Unfortunately, because of the assimilated nature of her family, the reader learns little about 19th-century southern Jewish life. In fact, Solomon's diaries even contain a few crude stereotypes, such as an allusion to a Sephardic Jewish merchant as ``Mr. Hebe.'' Amid its many references to the weather, school, food, company, family, and ``crushes'' on both men and other girls, Solomon's diary contains only sporadic allusions to the war itself. The most historically revealing are reports she reads of the battles of Manassas (Bull Run) and Shiloh; the most moving are her frequent pinings for her absent father, who is away as a sutler (provisioner of clothes and other supplies) along the battlefront in Virginia. However, Solomon's involvement in the contemporary maelstrom increases dramatically in the last 80 pages or so, after New Orleans is occupied by Federal forces on April 25, 1862. She provides insight into the harsh rule of General Benjamin F. (``the beast'') Butler, the efforts at defiance by Southern patriots of all ages and both sexes, and the shortages of food and other privations. Editor Ashkenazi (The Business of Jews in Louisiana, 18401875, not reviewed) provides necessary historical background and ``decodes'' many of the personal references in the diary; his afterword reveals the postbellum fate of many members of the Solomon family, including Clara. Stylistically, however, he makes the diary a more difficult read than it might have been by not editing more. Covers too short a period and contains too much ephemera to interest any but the most die-hard students of Confederate social or 19th-century American women's history.
Pub Date: June 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-8071-1968-7
Page Count: 444
Publisher: Louisiana State Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1995
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