An interesting celebration of a unique era’s activism, with greatest appeal to progressive readers.
An anthology commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Black Panthers focusing on the ordinary lives of its members.
The Panthers’ fungible reputation still affects American race relations. Co-editors Shih, a photojournalist and former contributor to the Financial Times, and Williams (Dean, Arts and Sciences/Fairfield Univ.; Teaching U.S. History: Beyond the Textbook, 2008, etc.) note their project was inspired by Shih’s portraits of Panther members, which “demystify the group and present its former members as they are today.” They divide the book into five sections to examine members’ routes into the group, its strengths in coalition building and community action, and the violent counter-reaction by the government. These are developed into a fuller narrative via several essays by other scholars such as Peniel E. Joseph, who connects the Panthers’ famous leadership to the outlook of their lesser-known followers: “Like many young black men of their generation…[Huey] Newton and [Bobby] Seale chafed against institutional racism, inadequate education, and police brutality.” Many interviews capture a similar sense of youthful outrage; as a Japanese-American Panther notes, “we weren’t any different in the way the larger society was treating us.” Some contributors address the slippery nature of the Panthers’ story, which tends to simplify their radical politics and sensationalize leaders’ demands for armed self-defense. As Jama Lazerow explains, “a series of problems frustrates any attempt to accurately characterize the rank and file of the Black Panther Party.” Interviewees acknowledge less romantic aspects of the movement, such as its eventual violent fracturing, which they insist was fomented by the FBI. Such flaws are contrasted with overlooked initiatives such as food pantries and medical care; as Alondra Nelson argues, they “placed these matters in the context of their broader political strategy.” The surviving radicals regard their Panther years as formative; many went on to careers in social services or even government.
An interesting celebration of a unique era’s activism, with greatest appeal to progressive readers.Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-56858-555-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Nation Books
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 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 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
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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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