by Dana Rubin ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 5, 2023
A valuable and enjoyable historical compilation of American women’s speeches.
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An anthology offers speeches by diverse women in American history.
In this book, Rubin—a writing and speaking coach—makes a good case for why nothing quite like this collection has been done before. Going beyond similar anthologies, the volume presents a mix of famous and lesser-known female figures, covering much of the span of American history, from the Colonial era to the present, with plenty of representation. The author—who has an online compilation, “Speaking While Female Speech Bank,” on which this book is based—acknowledges up front the challenges of sourcing in some cases. While historical figures such as Susan B. Anthony and Eleanor Roosevelt gave addresses that were widely published, other worthy female speakers, especially those who lived prior to 1830, have been barely acknowledged. The author also features the voices of many minority women, including Indigenous figures like Sarah Winnemucca and Ka’iulani. For those who enjoy American women’s history, this anthology will offer a lot that is familiar as well as some surprises. The speakers included here address a variety of issues—not all the speeches are about women, and, in some cases, they examine topics affecting minorities, from “Indian Removal” to Reconstruction-era convict leasing. And in the category of speakers whom readers thought they knew, Rubin offers some challenges. For example, with Sojourner Truth, her famous “Ain’t I a Woman” speech in dialect (“I have borne thirteen chillen, and seen ’em mos’ all sold off into slavery, and when I cried out with a mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard”) is followed by the address she actually gave (“I have plowed and reaped and husked and chopped and mowed, and can any man do more than that?”). In addition, the volume delivers occasional examples of White historical figures thought of as progressive (such as Clara Barton) expressing views about enslaved people that would be considered problematic by today’s standards. There is one notable exception in this diverse collection—while there are some Jewish women included, none of them strongly address Jewish issues in the way that other minorities tackle their communities’ problems (the closest is Lillian Wald’s speech on immigrant conditions). Otherwise, this is a compelling and needed historical resource that shows American women’s history in its full diversity.
A valuable and enjoyable historical compilation of American women’s speeches.Pub Date: June 5, 2023
ISBN: 9781637550304
Page Count: 398
Publisher: RealClear Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by David Grann ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 18, 2017
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
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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
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by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
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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