An occasionally intriguing work whose organization and diction consign it to reference status.
Maxwell (English and African-American Studies, Washington Univ.; New Negro, Old Left: African-American Writing and Communism between the Wars, 1999) reveals the obsession of the late FBI director with the lives and literature of leading black writers.
The author takes a hard look at the FBI’s reading and interpretations of African-American writing and at the personal lives of some of the greatest writers of the Harlem Renaissance and beyond. Having received myriad documents via the Freedom of Information Act (the author appends a list of more than 100), Maxwell painstakingly reconstructs the era and reimagines the principal players in this largely hidden drama—although he demonstrates later that many of the writers under surveillance were very well aware of it. Some of the author’s discoveries are startling. Playwright Lorraine Hansberry had the thickest file (over 1,000 pages); Claude McKay was the first black author the FBI focused on; Random House editor Bennett Cerf cooperated eagerly; J. Edgar Hoover believed James Baldwin was a “pervert”; Langston Hughes’ file exceeded 500 pages; Zora Neale Hurston and Jean Toomer seemed to have had no files at all. Perhaps the most surprising discovery, though, is how thoroughly the FBI “ghostreaders” read these writers’ texts, applying critical principles worthy of graduate students. Maxwell pauses in these sections to dive into the whirlpools of literary theory, journeys that numerous general readers would probably rather eschew. The author notes how the FBI backed off somewhat during the Depression and then returned to their focus during and after World War II. Maxwell also takes us to the current era and the works of Nikki Giovanni and Sonia Sanchez. This is a dense, academic text with a very conventional organization and with paragraphs thick with information and—sometimes—jargon.
An occasionally intriguing work whose organization and diction consign it to reference status.Pub Date: Jan. 18, 2015
ISBN: 978-0691130200
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Princeton Univ.
Review Posted Online: Oct. 18, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2014
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 Yorkerstaff 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
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.
Rootin’-tootin’ history of the dry-gulchers, horn-swogglers, and outright killers who populated the Wild West’s wildest city in the late 19th century.
The stories of Wyatt Earp and company, the shootout at the O.K. Corral, and Geronimo and the Apache Wars are all well known. Clavin, who has written books on Dodge City and Wild Bill Hickok, delivers a solid narrative that usefully links significant events—making allies of white enemies, for instance, in facing down the Apache threat, rustling from Mexico, and other ethnically charged circumstances. The author is a touch revisionist, in the modern fashion, in noting that the Earps and Clantons weren’t as bloodthirsty as popular culture has made them out to be. For example, Wyatt and Bat Masterson “took the ‘peace’ in peace officer literally and knew that the way to tame the notorious town was not to outkill the bad guys but to intimidate them, sometimes with the help of a gun barrel to the skull.” Indeed, while some of the Clantons and some of the Earps died violently, most—Wyatt, Bat, Doc Holliday—died of cancer and other ailments, if only a few of old age. Clavin complicates the story by reminding readers that the Earps weren’t really the law in Tombstone and sometimes fell on the other side of the line and that the ordinary citizens of Tombstone and other famed Western venues valued order and peace and weren’t particularly keen on gunfighters and their mischief. Still, updating the old notion that the Earp myth is the American Iliad, the author is at his best when he delineates those fraught spasms of violence. “It is never a good sign for law-abiding citizens,” he writes at one high point, “to see Johnny Ringo rush into town, both him and his horse all in a lather.” Indeed not, even if Ringo wound up killing himself and law-abiding Tombstone faded into obscurity when the silver played out.
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21458-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
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