A mesmerizing study in contrast and comparison.
A bifurcated, lively study of the year that saw the rise of the two most significant political figures of the early 20th century.
In previous books, historian Pietrusza has taken on momentous years (1948: Harry Truman's Improbable Victory and the Year that Transformed America, 2011, etc.). In this wonderful new history for lay readers, he tackles two rising political geniuses, one good, one evil, at their moments of election: Roosevelt and Hitler. Two unlikely men of destiny at the cusp of seizing power in 1932 and poised to shape historical events in their respective countries, they were able to overcome enormous obstacles—FDR his polio affliction, Hitler his lack of talent and general status of persona non grata—corral the necessary accomplices, and press forward by sheer and startling forces of will. While FDR and Hitler had little in common growing up—one hailed from the aristocracy and enjoyed every kind of family, school, and professional privilege; the other failed at most everything he tried, even spending time in a homeless men’s shelter—both had adoring mothers, leadership abilities, and an ability to stir their followers by marvelous rhetoric. After struggling with his disability since the early 1920s, FDR did not feel ready to run for the governorship of New York in 1928, but his nominating presidential convention speech for Al Smith galvanized the Democratic Party, and Smith begged him to succeed him as governor. While Smith lost abysmally to Herbert Hoover, Roosevelt “squeaked through to a narrow victory” and began his stupendous comeback, convincing the people of his vigorous health as well as the disastrous policies of Hoover. Hitler, having hit rock bottom once his mother died and twice rejected entrance to art school, found his conversion in World War I. As the author astutely notes, war became for Hitler a religion, and he began to cobble together his own lethal, unstoppable political force.
A mesmerizing study in contrast and comparison.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-7627-9302-0
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Lyons Press
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2015
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
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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