A thoughtful treat for the Lincoln and Civil War crowds.
Noted historians reflect on the life and presidency of Abraham Lincoln.
“Thousands of works have been written about Lincoln, and almost any Lincoln you want can be found in the literature,” writes contributor Eric Foner, and his contention is borne out by these recent papers from the Lincoln Forum, an annual scholarly event. Co-editors Holzer (Lincoln and the Power of the Press, 2014, etc.), Symonds (Neptune: The Allied Invasion of Europe and the D-Day Landings, 2014, etc.) and Williams (Judging Lincoln, 2002, etc.) have gathered authoritative views of Lincoln as a leader whose many facets—military strategist, savvy politician, man of exceptional character, among others—have earned him admiration as our greatest president. Contributors examine Lincoln’s relationships, actions and beliefs; his views on slavery and race; and his deft politicking to win the 1860 presidential campaign. Many papers focus on issues of concern to specialists. Others will have far broader appeal: Michael J. Kline offers a detailed account of the so-called Baltimore Plot to kill the president-elect (and finds no convincing evidence for it); Barnet Schecter traces the complexities of the 1863 New York City Draft Riots, the largest civil insurrection in U.S. history (where emotions over the first federal conscription law and fears over the Emancipation Proclamation exploded in five days of arson, looting and lynching); and Jason Emerson describes his discovery of Mary Lincoln’s long-lost sanitarium letters, which confirm her serious mental illness. John Stauffer tells the fascinating story of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” an anthem that began as an early-19th-century Southern camp meeting spiritual and later became the theme song for Billy Sunday’s revivals. Catherine Clinton’s contribution on mourning is a moving portrait of grieving mothers, many of whom turned to mediums to communicate with the dead.
A thoughtful treat for the Lincoln and Civil War crowds.Pub Date: March 2, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8232-6563-3
Page Count: 300
Publisher: Fordham Univ.
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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