by Wiley Sword ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 1999
A representative study of “the mainstream thinking of white southerners” during the Civil War ponders the psychological roots and eventual consequences of the Confederacy’s flawed belief in its own invincibility. “This is a book more concerned with ‘why’ than with analyzing a culture,” writes Sword (Mountains Touched by Fire: Chattanooga Besieged, 1995, etc.). “Why the southern soldiers fought so long and well. Why they thought they could win. Why the enormous effort, even in the face of imminent defeat. Why, long after total defeat, much of the pride and passion aroused by the war still remained deeply rooted in the South.” Relying on letters, journals, and contemporary memoirs of soldiers and their families, Sword traces the evolution of Southern self-image, from early confidence in their superior bravery and physical hardiness to the eventual rise of the romantic “Lost Cause” myth, which cast the Confederacy’s defeat as moral right overwhelmed by industrial might. Though he ultimately judges the South’s reliance on personal prowess “absurd” in a war that saw the emergence of modern military technology like the repeating rifle, Sword gives Southern pride its due, expertly tracing shifts in public attitudes from gung-ho mobilization to weary surrender, analyzing key turning points like Shiloh and Gettysburg. That analysis is hamstrung at times by a rather formal style and academic diction. Thankfully, the author liberally salts the text with quotations from primary sources. Most effective are extended portrayals of representative characters: Sarah Morgan, a young New Orleans woman who suffered under Northern occupation; Sandie Pendelton, a Stonewall Jackson aide killed just weeks before the birth of his son; and ambitious Harry Burgwyn, at 20, the war’s youngest colonel, also killed in battle. Focusing on the personal, Sword effectively dramatizes the arc of Southern mental resolve on the front lines and the home front. Despite starting slowly, Sword’s study gathers momentum enough to fashion a compelling and nuanced accounting of the South’s flawed confidence in its cause. (16 pages b&w photos)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-312-20366-7
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1999
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by David Grann ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 18, 2017
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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BOOK TO SCREEN
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BOOK TO SCREEN
by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
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.
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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by Elie Wiesel ; illustrated by Mark Podwal
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by Elie Wiesel ; translated by Marion Wiesel
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