Just like Revolution on the Hudson, a wonderful addition to the literature on the American Revolution, full of enlightening...
A readable history of the first battle of the American Revolution and the militiamen “who risked everything to defend their way of life and the freedom of future generations.”
This is hardly a new story, but Daughan (Revolution on the Hudson: New York City and the Hudson River Valley in the American War of Independence, 2016, etc.) imbues it with added nuances of character and motivation. Though King George III had not yet succumbed to the madness that would beset him in later years, he demanded nothing less than unconditional submission by the Colonies, reimbursement for tea and taxes lost during the Boston Tea Party, and vicious bombardment of coastal towns. The greatest failure of the king and his officials was their impatience in requiring rapid results without supplying sufficient resources. All, notes the author, were equally guilty of presuming that the reputation of British might would immediately frighten the colonists into submission. Nearly every one of Gen. Thomas Gage’s requests was ignored, which was especially surprising given his continuous service in the Colonies since 1755. The strength of the colonists’ militias was impressive; their numbers were considerably larger than any thought possible, while the number of loyalists were much fewer. Even though the standard of living in Massachusetts was high, the militiamen were not merely comfortable gentlemen untrained in warfare. Most were veterans of the French and Indian War and well-versed in organizing an army. While the problems seemed to begin in Boston, officials in London thought the Bostonians would be on their own in confronting the king’s taxes. They couldn’t have been more wrong, as 11 of the 12 other Colonies were quick to back up Massachusetts. As Daughan clearly shows, there were many errors of judgment in Boston, perhaps due to Gage’s fury at being ignored; his heart was not in a fight that he knew he would lose.
Just like Revolution on the Hudson, a wonderful addition to the literature on the American Revolution, full of enlightening facts and figures.Pub Date: April 3, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-393-24574-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Feb. 4, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 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
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