An intriguing history in need of further editing.
A history of two documents written in Arabic by enslaved Muslims that came to the attention of Thomas Jefferson in 1807.
Einboden, who has vast experience recovering and translating Arabic slave writings, sets the story of these brief missives against the intricate history of Muslim interactions with the nascent republic and, especially, Jefferson. The author begins with a brief vignette that receives great elaboration in later chapters: In 1807, two men who spoke no English were captured as suspected runaway slaves in rural Kentucky. They seemed unusual to their captors and were also literate, but only in Arabic, an all-but-unknown language in the early U.S. An eccentric traveler, convinced that these men needed to be freed, carried two pages of their Arabic writings to Washington, D.C., presenting them directly to Jefferson. Jefferson’s attempts to have the writings translated make for an interesting story, but the larger tale is that of America’s early interactions with the Muslim world. Beginning with the plight of an American captive in Africa while Jefferson was an envoy to Paris and moving on to the conflicts with Barbary pirates, Einboden shares this complex diplomatic history with an emphasis on the language barrier that further separated America from the Arabic-speaking world. The author highlights many scholars and leaders who were at the vanguard of breaking this language barrier, including Yale’s Ezra Stiles and the University of Pennsylvania’s Robert Patterson, who “was not only a professor of mathematics and inventor of ciphers, but also an anti-slavery activist.” Further, Einboden weaves in the political scandals of the day—e.g., Aaron Burr’s arrest for treason—and, finally, Jefferson’s progressive views on religious freedom. Worthwhile and even fascinating as a history, the book nevertheless suffers from a repetitive, awkward style, as the author consistently rehashes his points and repeats many ideas and even phrases throughout the book. Though he may be attempting to build suspense, it becomes tiresome by the end.
An intriguing history in need of further editing.Pub Date: May 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-19-084447-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: Jan. 15, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
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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