This monumental history brings to life the political leaders swept up in the slavery battle.
This second installment of an American history series focuses on the causes of the Civil War.
Fraser’s sequel to The Emergence of One American Nation (2016) explores two views of the United States: one based on traditional racial or ethnic views, the other on ideals of equality of all humans and their attendant, inalienable rights. One of the main factors the author highlights as leading eventually to the Civil War is that the nation’s creators essentially kicked the can down the road: “The founders left behind the twin problems of slavery and federalism, which were often two sides of the same coin, and they continue to bedevil their progeny.” Throughout this well-researched volume, Fraser elaborates on the signposts on the road to war. First was Thomas Jefferson’s westward-looking “Empire of Liberty” approach and the question of whether slavery would be allowed in America’s new lands. Then there was the ascent of Andrew Jackson, champion of racist “ethnonationalism.” Next came the rise of the abolitionists. The deal breaker was the election of Abraham Lincoln, an advocate of restricting slavery, as president in 1860. The ultimate result was the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter in 1861. Fraser’s massive work proves Santayana’s theory that those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it. The author deftly shows that, even from this nation’s earliest days, there were those who were concerned only with the prosperity of themselves and their families and others who thought it was morally proper to help those who were less fortunate. So what’s happening in the U.S. today isn’t something that’s new and different. These stances recur again and again throughout this engrossing tome (and will likely appear in Fraser’s future volumes as well). The author also paints vibrant portraits of the key players and others, such as Henry Clay, John Calhoun, and Stephen Douglas, by using the words of these figures and their biographers. Fraser reveals the philosophical struggles of those in the rooms where crucial decisions were made. He succeeds in putting human faces on what could be dry, drab history.
This monumental history brings to life the political leaders swept up in the slavery battle.Pub Date: Jan. 15, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-9970805-2-0
Page Count: 664
Publisher: Fraser & Associates
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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