DeRose condenses half a century’s worth of political history into an informative compendium of the political struggles...
A history of the Civil War as told through the six American presidents that experienced it firsthand.
Only once have five former presidents been alive to look upon their successor. When Abraham Lincoln took office in 1861, these men were John Tyler, Martin Van Buren, Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan. DeRose (Law/Arizona Summit Law School; Founding Rivals: Madison vs. Monroe, the Bill of Rights, and the Election that Saved a Nation, 2011, etc.) carefully examines each president’s role in the buildup to the Civil War and their respective differences in their approaches to the problem of slavery and secession. Precipitated by the tariffs of 1828 and 1832, the nullification crisis of 1832 proved an early test of the Union’s resolve and willingness to assert its sovereignty. South Carolina declared both tariff bills null and void and would no longer remit federal duties. President Andrew Jackson, hardly one to recoil from this type of brazen insubordination, demanded local allies collect the duty by any means necessary and issued a statement asserting the power of the Union over the right of a state to annul federal law or secede. Ultimately, the nullification crisis was resolved through political compromise, but the pivotal issue of secession proved to have roots far deeper than many could have foreseen. Foreshadowing the Civil War nearly 40 years later, this crisis would shape the way future presidents forged their opinions on slavery and states’ rights. While discussing Jackson and Lincoln, DeRose smartly focuses his attention on a few of the lesser-known, but not less valuable presidents. The author’s narrative portraits of each president’s often precarious relationship to the Union reveals eye-opening facts that are otherwise overlooked—e.g., John Tyler was the only president to die an enemy of his country.
DeRose condenses half a century’s worth of political history into an informative compendium of the political struggles leading to the Civil War.Pub Date: June 17, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-7627-9664-9
Page Count: 392
Publisher: Lyons Press
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
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 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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