An American history that serves as a heartfelt plea for a revival of socially responsible leadership.
For two decades after World War II, government actually strived to provide basic needs and equal opportunity for all Americans.
Goldfield (History/Univ. of North Carolina, Charlotte; Still Fighting the Civil War: The American South and Southern History, 2013, etc.) argues that American children born in the “baby boom” generation were uniquely gifted because of federal policies enacted by Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, and Lyndon Johnson. These presidents, writes the author, saw government as a beneficial force in American life and demonstrated leadership that “played a major role in moving the government to extend the pursuit of happiness to a broader population.” They “believed in the commonwealth ideal of mutual responsibility” among citizens and between citizens and government. Each tried to protect and foster access to education, social services, housing, employment, and health care. Goldfield offers a biographical overview of each leader, emphasizing the family poverty that made them especially sympathetic to those in similar straits. Truman unsuccessfully proposed universal health care; Eisenhower quietly pursued civil rights for African-Americans; Johnson declared war on poverty and envisioned a Great Society. Often, their aims were thwarted by recalcitrant legislators and voters, responses that undermine Goldfield’s argument about the efficacy of moral leadership and instead point out endemic racism, sexism, and greed. Although the subtitle is “When Government Was Good,” a more accurate subtitle would be, “When Idealistic Leaders Advocated for the Common Good.” They surely did not always succeed. The author amasses an overwhelming number of statistics, and he calls upon some voices from the gifted generation, particularly men and women he knew growing up in a multiethnic Brooklyn neighborhood and whose success he attributes to government gifts such as GI mortgages and affordable public colleges. Belief that federal government must work for all Americans eroded with Ronald Reagan and has reached a low point in Donald Trump and his supporters. Goldfield laments the cynicism that pervades politics: “We have lost sight of what good government can do.”
An American history that serves as a heartfelt plea for a revival of socially responsible leadership.Pub Date: Nov. 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-62040-088-3
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Aug. 21, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2017
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
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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