A comprehensive overview of newcomers to America.
A multicentury examination of the drama of immigration.
Historians Bon Tempo and Diner offer a detailed survey of immigration, from Colonial times to the present, focusing particularly on the “economic forces, political structures, and familial and personal imperatives” that led men and women to leave their homes and settle in a new land. These “voluntary immigrants,” the authors acknowledge, tell a story different from that of enslaved Africans, who were brought against their will. While the particular conditions that impelled people to journey to America changed over time, all immigrants hoped to find a better life for themselves and their children. The Founding Fathers saw White, European immigrants, regardless of religion, as vital to the new nation’s economic growth. By the early 19th century, though, some lawmakers feared that poor immigrants would burden taxpayers, a concern that would reverberate later. At times, the authors reveal, potential immigrants faced strictures against leaving their home countries. In 1788, for example, Britain “banned the emigration of skilled artisans from Ireland.” From 1820 to 1920, America experienced a huge wave that swelled the immigrant population from 1.4 million in the 1840s to 6.3 million in the 1910s. Many were not escaping religious oppression or dire poverty; rather, they were middle class but saw few opportunities at home. Men often came first, establishing themselves before sending for wives and children. After first locating themselves in ethnic communities, they moved rapidly across the expanding nation. The authors examine the racial, religious, and political persecutions that caused immigration as well as the racism and xenophobia that many encountered when they arrived. Over the years, changing immigration policies have reflected fears that particular groups of immigrants posed a threat to economic security and national identity. The authors predict that in the future, an influx of refugees will result from the exigencies of climate change. Anecdotes highlight individual immigrants’ experiences, supporting the authors’ contention that “immigrants are like us.”
A comprehensive overview of newcomers to America.Pub Date: May 31, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-300-22686-7
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: March 21, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2022
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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