Because history involves continual change, all years are transitional; some, however, are more so than others. As this well- written, often colorful work shows, 1964 unquestionably was such a year. For more than two decades the chief political correspondent for the Chicago Tribune, and also the biographer of British comedian John Cleese, Margolis uses dozens of short vignettes to provide a month-by-month unfolding of the major American political and cultural developments, from John Kennedy’s assassination in November 1963 through the culminating events of the Free Speech Movement uprising at the University of California, Berkeley, in December 1964. His focus rests largely on such society-transforming events as the long struggle over and passage of the first major civil rights act since Reconstruction, the Mississippi “Freedom Summer” and the murder of three civil rights workers (Goodman, Chaney and Schwerner) and the transition from American soldiers” role as “advisors” in Vietnam to active participants, thanks in part to the Gulf of Tonkin resolution (September), as well as the presidential campaign contest between Lyndon Johnson and Barry Goldwater. The year 1964 was also fascinating for both high and popular culture, with plays on Broadway by Edward Albee and Tennessee Williams, the flowering of pop art, and the first American tours of both the Beetles and the Rolling Stones. Margolis demonstrates how major developments and movements “feminism and environmentalism, for instance—all were rooted in or around 1964. His book is full of surprising information, e.g., Johnson was seriously considering not running in the weeks before the 1964 Democratic Convention; also, his acceptance speech was written by the novelist John Steinbeck. Like Barbara Tuchman and other deft popular historians, Margolis is a master of the revealing anecdote and pithy summary. This thoroughly enjoyable, informative look at America of 35 years ago will revive memories for aging baby boomers and lead all readers to realize how dramatically the country has changed in a mere generation. (16 pages b&w photos) (Author tour)
Pub Date: March 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-688-15323-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1999
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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