Whether drawn by curiosity or compelled by assignments, students of American history will find plenty of chew on in this meaty, heavily illustrated entry in the new Pages from History series. Lepore gathers extracts from letters, books, journals, sermons, advertisements, prophecies, folktales, and news reports generated by the meetings of New World and Old, chronicling the period from 1492—1789, when the autobiography of ex-slave Olaudah Equiano was published. The author opens with a discussion of what primary sources are and how to interpret them, considers each theater of contact in turn from the Caribbean islands to New England, shoehorns in a chapter on the African slave trade, and links all of her passages with analytical background notes. Beginning with a full-color section, the pictures are all, roughly, contemporary, heavy on maps that chart the world’s expansion in the European consciousness and including often fanciful scenes that in many cases are all that is left of vanished Native American cultures. Lepore dismisses connections between Asia and the Americas in a few words, and treats the Melungeon claims of descent from precolonial Turkish and African settlers in North America not at all. At her best, as when she tellingly pairs Cortez’s report of a first meeting with Montezuma with a Aztecan account, she opens windows on the different agendas and mutual incomprehension that so often turned peaceful contact into wholesale devastation. She draws from a host of hard-to-find sources, and creates a ghastly, compelling picture of one of human history’s pivotal moments. (notes, index not seen, b&w illustrations, maps, chronology, further reading) (Nonfiction. 12-14)
Pub Date: Dec. 13, 1999
ISBN: 0-19-510513-3
Page Count: 175
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1999
This entry in the Oxford Portraits series is both very good and very useful. White presents a clear biography of the Supreme Court justice who served in the Civil War, studied law, and lived long in the shadow of his famous writer father of the same name. By the time he came to the Supreme Court, he was already 60 years old, but served for three decades more. White creates a vivid portrait of this scholarly and philosophical legal thinker while including rich details of his intellectual but reserved home life and his affectionate flirtations with many women. More than that, readers will absorb a history of the development of legal education, the growth of the Supreme Court, and how law unfolds as a study and a discipline. White is especially felicitous in explaining how the elegance of Holmes’s prose occasionally obscured the legal point he was making. Quotations from Holmes’s writing and picture captions with further details add to the story, and not the least of its accomplishments is to show a man who began the greatest of his career challenges when he was already perceived of as old. Excellent. (chronology, further reading, index) (Biography. 10-12)
Pub Date: Nov. 12, 1999
ISBN: 0-19-511667-4
Page Count: 152
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A vivid yet even-handed account of the ill-fated Donner Party—the California-bound wagon train that was forced by impassable snow to camp for the winter of 1846—47 on the eastern slopes of the Sierra Nevada, resorting to cannibalism when there was literally nothing else to eat. Calabro neither shrinks from nor sensationalizes this aspect of the story. Instead she places it in a carefully constructed context beginning with the start of the journey in Springfield, Illinois, on April 15, and chronicling each unfortunate decision along the way that ultimately led to the company’s entrapment. Making good use of primary sources, especially the letters and memoirs of Virginia Reed, who turned 13 on the journey, the author tells of Virginia’s excitement at having her own pony to ride west. However, she doesn’t limit the story to Virginia’s perspective, but skillfully profiles many members of the party, including Virginia’s dynamic father, James, who strongly favored taking an unproven shortcut, and the intelligent and perceptive Tamsen Donner, who was firmly against it. The result is a combination of well-researched factual detail, a gripping narrative, strong characterizations, and a thoughtful analysis of the historical record. (b&w photos, chronology, further reading, bibliography, index) (Nonfiction. 10-14)
Pub Date: April 19, 1999
ISBN: 0-395-86610-3
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1999
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