This collection of documents and arguments makes a timely companion to current, ongoing political discussions.
Unable to “find a suitable book to use for a new class on emergency presidential power and the war on terror,” Edelson (Government/American Univ.) wrote this one as a primer.
The currently debated issues informing the author's arguments include whether the president can order the deaths of American citizens on his own authority and whether doctrines of state secrecy can be employed to block legal suits completely rather than justify merely withholding evidence, warrantless wiretapping and indefinite detention. Though the evolution has varied, Edelson traces the roots of each issue to the doctrine of executive power espoused by Dick Cheney during the George W. Bush administration, which had its inception under the administration of Richard Nixon after his excesses were reined in. The author provides two valuable contributions, which both preface recent developments and provide context from original historical sources. The scope of presidential power has been a subject of contention throughout the history of the country, and Edelson provides documentation from the Constitutional Convention, the Federalist Papers, and the administrations of George Washington and John Adams. The author examines Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus at the beginning of the Civil War as well as subsequent cases on the power of military tribunals. The author also looks at cases from the Spanish-American War, the adoption of the Espionage and Sedition acts in 1917, Franklin Roosevelt’s treatment of German saboteurs, and the internment of Japanese-Americans during and after World War II. Edelson provides sources that document both sides of these cases, relates them to the founding documents and discussions, and lays down a foundation from which the current debate about the powers of the presidency can be more clearly understood.
This collection of documents and arguments makes a timely companion to current, ongoing political discussions.Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-299-29530-1
Page Count: 336
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Sept. 18, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2013
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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