These authoritative essays, most of which appeared previously in various formats, will appeal mainly to serious students and...
A pre-eminent historian reflects on the Civil War’s lasting impact on the nation.
In 1861, Abraham Lincoln told Congress that the struggle to preserve the Union “is not altogether for today—it is for a vast future also.” In these essays from the past eight years, McPherson (Emeritus, History/Princeton Univ.; Embattled Rebel: Jefferson Davis as Commander in Chief, 2014, etc.) notes the public’s continuing fascination with the Civil War, with its 750,000 soldiers dead, its “larger-than-life, near mythical” figures like Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant, and its great “drama and romance and tragedy.” But at a deeper level, the conflict remains a lasting, seminal event in American history that transformed the average citizen’s relationship with government, sparked a historic shift in values toward positive liberty, and created the continuing “legacy of slavery in the form of racial discrimination and prejudice.” In many of the essays, McPherson reflects on the historiography of the war, including the ways in which academic historians’ enthusiasm for social as opposed to military history has affected scholarship on Lincoln. Several essays sharply criticize the work of specific historians, including Harry Stout for misrepresentations in Upon the Altar of the Nation (2006) and T. Harry Williams for his mistaken conclusion in Lincoln and His Generals (1952) that the president was a natural war strategist. Others explore topics from the expansion of slave states to wartime naval issues to the impact on American society of death and destruction on a massive scale. In a discussion of Lincoln and slavery, the author agrees with Eric Foner that the president was anti-slavery (deeming it a violation of natural rights) but not an abolitionist (he expected slavery would eventually die out).
These authoritative essays, most of which appeared previously in various formats, will appeal mainly to serious students and specialists.Pub Date: March 4, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-19-937577-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: Dec. 12, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
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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