A well-deserved first biography.
An enthusiastic life of “the first person, man or woman, to be awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.”
An adviser to presidents from Franklin Roosevelt to Lyndon Johnson, Anna Rosenberg (1899-1983) was a prominent national figure whose present obscurity is perplexing. Gorham, a lawyer and American history teacher, doesn’t fully explain why she is often forgotten, but he delivers a vivid account of her eventful life. The daughter of Jewish immigrants, Rosenberg thrived in cutthroat Tammany Hall and, as a sideline, established one of America’s first public relations agencies, quickly acquiring the reputation as a problem solver. Still in her 20s, she caught the attention of Roosevelt, who was beginning his rise in New York politics. FDR loved workaholic loyalists who were also entertaining companions during his off hours. Even history buffs may be surprised as Gorham recounts the next 20 years, during which Rosenberg, a member of FDR’s inner circle, became a leading “fixer,” exerting more influence than Cabinet members (whom FDR tended to ignore). Her name appeared regularly in newspaper articles, editorials, and national magazine profiles. According to one journalist, “Mrs. Rosenberg was regarded in Washington as possibly the closest person to President Roosevelt with the exception of Harry Hopkins.” Other than John F. Kennedy, Roosevelt’s predecessors respected her talents, and Gen. George Marshall asked her personally to become assistant secretary of defense, his chief aide. Rosenberg’s sense of justice took precedence over political expediency, and Gorham chronicles her leading role in the creation of the GI Bill and desegregation of wartime industries, the armed forces, and schools. An unabashed liberal with no national constituency, she became a lightning rod for extremists during the McCarthy era. Readers may prefer to skim long sections devoted to attacks by right-wing columnists and congressmen during the 1950s, but they may be pleasantly surprised to learn that today’s extremists are hardly unique in their often baseless attacks.
A well-deserved first biography.Pub Date: Feb. 21, 2023
ISBN: 9780806542003
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Citadel/Kensington
Review Posted Online: Nov. 28, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 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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