Following Miller’s complex narrative may tax some general readers. Nonetheless, he offers an eclectic education often marked...
A debut book that ranges across disciplines and decades to connect the natural environment—especially long-lived trees—to a scathing critique of American-style capitalism.
Alternating abstract theory with impressive research, both bolstered by extensive sources listed in a near-80-page endnotes section, the author, who has taught at Cornell and the University of Wisconsin, builds his case about understanding American history by examining destruction of the environment through essays grounded in the 19th century. The essays focus on naturalist/writer Henry David Thoreau; photographer A.J. Russell; slavery opponent James McCune Smith; anarchy advocate Burnette Haskell; and even Communist theorist Karl Marx. Miller terms the living trees connecting the land to westward-moving humans “witness trees.” From their spreading branches, the trees witnessed what humans considered “Progress.” As Miller writes, “in this epic whose text was the landscape, the most prominent feature was the continent’s leafy verdure.” Looking back, however, the author considers expansion and the many attendant unacceptable compromises of social justice. At intervals, Miller abandons his negativity by hoping for a better future marked by healthy trees, clean rivers, thriving family farms, humane technological advances, and communities of residents bound together in mutual compassion. In some sections, the author moves away from abstraction to ground the connected essays in specific trees, such as the great elm on the Boston Common or the giant sequoia in California that has been dubbed General Sherman. The essay focusing on Russell is especially poignant regarding trees—their presence and their absence—and how they link to ersatz progress, and many of Russell’s photographs illustrate the pages. Occasionally, Miller turns to the autobiographical, and understanding his adolescence and adulthood aid in comprehending his severe critique of American society in general and capitalism in particular. His real and imagined linkages to Thoreau, for example, provide clues.
Following Miller’s complex narrative may tax some general readers. Nonetheless, he offers an eclectic education often marked by soaring prose.Pub Date: April 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-226-33614-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Univ. of Chicago
Review Posted Online: Jan. 7, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
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
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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