A useful historical look at how strong the youth demographic can be.
A debut book of American history about how the youth culture and first-time voters influenced the political landscape from 1840 to 1900.
During that period, voter turnout in presidential elections was 70-80 percent, higher than any other period. In 1840, a man’s first vote was a rite of passage, and in that year, 40 percent of voters were new. Property requirements for voting were removed, and exploding population, rising immigration, economic growth, and the opening of the West brought mobility and new jobs. Ballots were printed and passed out by party supporters, and everyone knew whom you voted for, which encouraged bribery and other evils. The young knew more about the political races than older adults, and they used their votes to become a public force. More importantly, adults actually listened to them, argued with them, and supported their views. Grinspan, a curator at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, points to a sociological difference between 19th-century “youth,” who required action, and 20th-century “adolescents.” The author cites many journals showing teenage angst but also strong enthusiasm for political views. Politics was a tool to cope with the social, economic, and romantic uncertainties of their lives, and it gave them a chance to establish an identity and achieve something meaningful. Rallies, parades, clubs, and barbecues were important places to meet people, for both men and women, and the political networks supported men in their “wander year” between school and career. These virgin votes were equally important to the party leadership. Most adults committed to a party for life, so leaders were anxious for new blood. The shrewdest politicos realized young people’s worth and put them to work. Probably the best part of the book is Grinspan’s discussion of how this enthusiasm died. Gentlemen decided it was acceptable to vote and formed their own restricted clubs, and the secret ballot, baseball, and even the bicycle played a part in the decline.
A useful historical look at how strong the youth demographic can be.Pub Date: May 9, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4696-2734-2
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Univ. of North Carolina
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2016
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 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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