A lively history of one of the most famous streets in America.
Four hundred years in the life of a road the original Dutch settlers referred to as Brede Wegh (Broad Way).
For a thoroughfare that, in the early 1600s, had such poor drainage that “the roadbed quickly became a foul stew of mud and horse manure,” Broadway hasn’t done too badly for itself over the ensuing centuries. In this opinionated work, architect Leadon (Architecture/City Univ. of New York) tells the story of Broadway in Manhattan, from Bowling Green in the south to the Bronx in the north. The book has 13 sections, one per mile, with stories behind the development of each neighborhood. The author gives space to everyone from the architects who designed Broadway’s iron buildings to the theater world’s stars and impresarios. Leadon calls the area’s “lack of coherence” or development strategy “the urban planning equivalent of throwing dice.” This is an impressively detailed history, sometimes overly so. Leadon is fond of long lists—e.g., items for sale in Constable’s department store, “so comprehensively opulent, that it practically defined the Gilded Age”; the curios producer David Belasco kept in the studio above his theater; the diseases that killed New Yorkers in the early 19th century—and some readers may tire of repeated references to money: how much a property cost, the equivalent amount in today’s dollars, etc. Still, Leadon offers plenty of entertaining anecdotes. George M. Cohan “insisted that his dressing room be decorated floor-to-ceiling with American flags,” and Thomas Edison promoted his incandescent bulb in 1882 when he “mounted light bulbs on the heads of a contingent of militiamen and had them drag a steam engine and dynamo up Broadway.” And the author has a way with a takedown: he notes that John Jacob Astor IV, pampered member of America’s richest family in the 1890s, was known as “Jack Ass” and that his drowsy expression in photos made it seem “as if submitting to the lens was an hour of yachting lost forever.”
A lively history of one of the most famous streets in America.Pub Date: April 17, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-393-24010-8
Page Count: 560
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Jan. 21, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
