A well-researched study of the Puritans that will find most of its readers within academia.
A reexamination of Puritanism spanning the British Isles and American Colonies.
Hall (Emeritus, Religious History/Harvard Divinity School; A Reforming People: Puritanism and the Transformation of Public Life in New England, 2011, etc.) sets out to explore the origins, triumphs, and defeats of the Puritan movement as it was manifested in England, Scotland, America, and, to a lesser extent, Ireland. The author also aims to reclaim Puritanism from the unseemly stereotype it acquired as the liberalizing church in England and America distanced itself from this ancestor in the 19th century. The story of Puritanism begins, necessarily, with the story of the Reformation and, most especially, with that of the “Reformed Movement” of Calvinism, which migrated north into England and Scotland in the 1500s. Hall begins with this period and explains how a significant portion of the church, having hoped for thorough reform, became increasingly dissatisfied with the policies of Elizabeth I and then James I, both of whom they felt were too aligned with Catholic practice and doctrine. The Puritan movement that arose from these disputes was never entirely unified, but it would act as a defining force in British politics and church polity for decades, culminating in the execution of Charles I. Parallel to this history lesson, Hall delves into the lives of everyday Puritans and how the movement affected the worship of the average church. This includes the “practical divinity,” whereby Reformed theology was translated into the quest for personal salvation, and the “reformation of manners,” the push for holy living for which Puritanism is often remembered and, indeed, caricatured. As he did in A Reforming People, Hall provides an in-depth and erudite study that scholars will find quite useful; however, average readers will be lost in the details and academic tone. Ultimately, the author makes readers reconsider the character and role of the Puritan movement.
A well-researched study of the Puritans that will find most of its readers within academia.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-691-15139-7
Page Count: 520
Publisher: Princeton Univ.
Review Posted Online: Oct. 6, 2019
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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