Impassioned and eloquent, jazz historian Collier (Duke Ellington, 1987; Louis Armstrong: An American Genius, 1983, etc.) here turns a critical eye to the history of self-interest among Americans and its phenomenal growth in recent times. Tracing patterns of socialization back to the 18th century, Collier notes the transition from a rough-and-ready way of life to one in which gentility and morality came into play during the Victorian period. As a distinct, home-grown middle class emerged, it adopted the work ethic and views on temperance and sexual behavior that were among the hallmarks of Victorianism, using them as a shield against the flood of European immigrants with more relaxed attitudes. Propriety was the order of the day in spirit if not always in practice, but the winds of change swept away Victorian controls early in the 20th century as increases in leisure time and urbanization gave rise to a burgeoning entertainment industry. The invention of radio was a decisive moment in the transformation of America from a family and community-based society to a self-centered one, with TV, the Beats, hippies, drug and alcohol abuse, the rise of single parenting and dissolution of the traditional family, and a relaxation of sexual mores with media exploitation of the subject also perceived by Collier as instrumental in the relentless advance of selfishness. Using his jazz knowledge sparingly, the author draws on a wealth of other sources for his social history, marshalling reams of statistics and colorful examples with equal ease. A vibrant, sweeping analysis of the roots of American self- indulgence, even if largely familiar, and a valuable overview of the changes in social attitudes from the Puritans to the ``Me Generation.''
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1991
ISBN: 0-19-505277-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1991
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
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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