A well-presented, little-known sidebar to the struggle for Irish independence.
Civil War veterans plot to win Irish independence by kidnapping Canada.
By the end of the American Civil War, the movement for national liberation was moribund in Ireland, where the populace was debilitated, demoralized, and disarmed in the wake of the Great Hunger 15 years earlier. America, however, teemed with refugees from that disaster, resentful of England and now armed and battle-hardened. What could they do for their native land? Union general Thomas Sweeny of the Fenian Brotherhood had an idea: Attack poorly defended Canada, then still a colony of the crown, and trade the captured territory back to Britain in exchange for Irish independence. What could possibly go wrong? Everything, as it turned out. Under several different leaders, Fenians raided Canada from New Brunswick to Manitoba in several incidents between 1866 and 1871. None succeeded in holding Canadian territory for more than 48 hours; their principal accomplishment was to encourage Canadian confederation as an enhancement to national security. Clearly an enthusiast of Irish nationalism, Klein (Strong Boy: The Life and Times of John L. Sullivan, America's First Sports Hero, 2013, etc.) manages to keep a straight face as he narrates this opéra bouffe of delusional and incompetent commanders sponsored by bitterly competing groups riddled with spies, leading tiny armies against the combined forces of the British, Canadian, and American governments. But there was nothing funny about the costs to idealistic working men in the ranks who paid for these follies with their money and, in a few cases, their lives. The author offers a thoroughly researched and engagingly written account of the leaders of America's feuding Irish émigré groups, earnest patriots all, whose clashing egos and strategies kept their groups splintered and weak. He takes the preparations for the hopeless invasions as seriously as did the men involved, although he knows as well as readers that they are all doomed to humiliating failure.
A well-presented, little-known sidebar to the struggle for Irish independence.Pub Date: March 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54260-9
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Nov. 25, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2018
HISTORY | MILITARY | WORLD | GENERAL HISTORY
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
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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