A book that will make even readers with a strong knowledge of the war think about how it was fought and why it ended as it...
A genuinely fresh, persuasive perspective on the Civil War.
Murray (Emeritus, History/Ohio State Univ.; War, Strategy, and Military Effectiveness, 2011, etc.) and Hsieh (History/U.S. Naval Academy; West Pointers and the Civil War, 2009, etc.) see the war as the first to combine the fervent nationalism of the French Revolution and the technological advances of the Industrial Revolution. Vast armies, fighting on a continental scale, had made their appearance near the beginning of the 19th century. But as Napoleon’s failed invasion of Russia showed, the infrastructure to support them over those distances was yet to be created. By the time the Union and Confederacy squared off, the railroad, steamship, and telegraph set the table for a new kind of war. The ability of a few leaders—notably, Lincoln, Grant, and Sherman—to grasp the new paradigm led to the Union victory. The authors give the major battles the proper consideration, but this is not a blow-by-blow account; many lesser engagements go unmentioned. The authors argue that the western theater was of more importance than the more famous battles in the east. For one thing, that was where Grant established the reputation that eventually brought him to command. More importantly, it was where the war on the South’s economy took shape, culminating in Sherman’s March to the Sea. The authors pull no punches in their evaluations of the leaders on both sides. Even the much-admired Lee is faulted for his conviction that one decisive battle could end the war. The likes of McClellan and Bragg come off far worse. The authors also make useful analogies to the whole history of war, from ancient Greece to the 21st century, and quotes from the memoirs of Grant, Sherman, and others give the participants’ perspectives, although a few quotes and anecdotes are recycled too often.
A book that will make even readers with a strong knowledge of the war think about how it was fought and why it ended as it did. A winner for Civil War history buffs.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-691-16940-8
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Princeton Univ.
Review Posted Online: Aug. 8, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2016
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
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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