A sterling educational tool that offers a fresh presentation of how “democracy in America has always been a contact sport.”
A vigorous civics lesson of 19 case studies that illustrate America’s evolving democratic processes and institutions.
Based on a course at Harvard Business School taught by Moss (A Concise Guide to Macroeconomics, 2007, etc.), this set of well-documented, accessible essays presents the prickly challenges facing the rapidly changing American democracy, for lawmakers and citizens alike. The author aims to give readers an immediate sense of whether these conflicts provided constructive or destructive forces to the republic. The lively debate over the making of the Constitution and the states’ bruising battle for ratification showcase the first important challenge to the new nation. It’s a well-worn piece of American history, but the author’s third essay, about the arguments for and against Cherokee Removal (1836), is less trod, and he shows how it divided lawmakers and Native Americans alike over the issue of sovereignty. No doubt reflecting Moss’ areas of expertise, several of these fascinating cases involve the banking system, and not just Alexander Hamilton’s push to establish a national bank. The author also examines banking and political reforms in New York (1838) and the issue of debt at the New York Constitutional Convention of 1846, and he surveys the evolution of the Federal Reserve, culminating in the crisis of 2007-2009. Moss emphasizes the dramatic changes that have taken place at the state and local levels, such as the struggle over public education and its funding in early America (1851). However, as he points out, since the late 18th century, there has been “far less expansion of formal popular influence at the federal level.” The author also delineates the reform of the jury system in terms of racial equality, the adoption of the secret ballot, the influence of muckraking journalism on the abuses of big government (e.g., Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, 1906), and the dire ramifications of allowing First Amendment rights for corporations (Citizens United, 2010), among other compelling cases.
A sterling educational tool that offers a fresh presentation of how “democracy in America has always been a contact sport.”Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-674-97145-5
Page Count: 690
Publisher: Belknap/Harvard Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 1, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2016
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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