An informed, astute investigation of Cherokee survivance.
How an Indigenous people resisted, adapted, and endured during an era of colonization.
Unlike most previous studies of the Cherokee, which have tended to focus on the first half of the 19th century, this thorough and insightful history emphasizes the period from early contact with Europeans to the end of the 18th century. The book acknowledges the challenges in telling this story given the enormous gaps in the historical record, especially from a Cherokee perspective, and the untrustworthiness of European and American accounts, especially English translations of Cherokee speech. Nevertheless, the narrative that emerges here draws attention to a people’s vigorous, creative, and long-standing agency in affirming a sense of collective identity. As Narrett explains, “This book is not simply about what Europeans ‘did’ to ‘Indians’ as victims of colonialism. It concerns the changing and often tumultuous relations between Native peoples as they variously fought, made peace, or allied with one another in the light of new and often unprecedented challenges.” Particularly well documented here is the role played by Cherokee women in negotiating those challenges: “Cherokee diplomacy was not simply a matter of what came top-down or was decided by headmen in conferences with colonial and later U.S. officials. Cherokee women sustained community not only in daily tasks but by making their voices heard and taking risks in the political-social sphere.” Also effective are the author’s descriptions of the complexities of political negotiations with settler populations, the role of slavery in Cherokee culture, and the evolution of self-definition that emerged in response to the pressures of colonization. The concluding section of the work ably traces connections to the present-day Cherokee and to the endurance of “ideals of communal harmony, spiritual connectedness to nature, and the capacity to negotiate differences among themselves.”
An informed, astute investigation of Cherokee survivance.Pub Date: April 1, 2025
ISBN: 9780674258204
Page Count: 600
Publisher: Belknap/Harvard Univ.
Review Posted Online: Jan. 14, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
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
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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