A scholarly, earnest, sometimes dense cultural history of the decade. English historian Marwick (Britain in Our Century, 1985, etc.) seems determined to rescue the 1960s, both from orthodox leftist historians (who view the era as an explosion of the youthful bourgeoisie) and from conservatives (who believe that it brought about the decline and fall of Western civilization). Marwick enumerates the period’s cultural, artistic, and political achievements, which, he believes, really began in 1958 (the year big business headed full-tilt at the youth market, and the year popular music shifted to rock ‘n— roll) and ended in 1974, when the oil crisis reached consumers around the world and set off a wave of conservative reaction. The author’s viewpoint is European. Much of what he says will be unfamiliar to American readers (as, for instance, when he discusses the role of upper-crust English schools in shaping political radicalism). Much else, however, concerns common ground, especially when Marwick writes about music. He’s also perceptive about the literature of the time and how it influenced other forms of expression. For example, he includes an interview with ex-Beatle Paul McCartney, who reminisces about the influence of Jack Kerouac’s autobiographical novel On the Road on British youth in the late 1950s. And Marwick has a lot to tell us about the student revolt in France and Italy of 1968 and 1969. Occasionally, he gets a little too pedantically encyclopedic for his own good, as in examining the miniskirt, which, —almost always worn with tights, was a very popular, and even tenacious, fashion, being worn and argued over after the advent of hot pants . . . and then, in the classic fashion pattern of extreme innovation followed by extreme reaction, the maxiskirt, which reached to the ankles.— Even then, however, he offers a fine resource for students of the era. And for those who remember Marcuse, McLuhan, and Marx fondly, Marwick’s tome will offer a stimulating stroll down memory lane.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-19-210022-X
Page Count: 750
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1998
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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