A multilayered scholarly argument for the continued study of “the development of ethnic niches.”
A chronicle of the rise of Jewish editors to important positions in the literary establishment by the 1960s and how they shaped the book industry and the reading public.
On one hand, the concept of a Jewish literary mafia rings antisemitic, especially as decried by predominantly Protestant male authors like Truman Capote and Jack Kerouac. On the other hand, the fact remained that in the early 1900s, the finest publishing houses began to be led by Jews, among the first being Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., founded in 1915, and Simon & Schuster, founded in 1924. Lambert, the director of the Jewish Studies Program at Wellesley College, begins by emphasizing that, until the turn of the 20th century, Jews were largely “literarily disenfranchised” from these positions (as were African Americans, Natives, and other minorities). They were also barred from faculty positions in English programs until the 1930s. The author shows how the next half-century marked enormous changes to Jews’ socio-economic status in the U.S. As significant editors—including Irving Howe, book reviewer at TIME magazine; Barbara Epstein and Robert Silvers, co-founders of the New York Review of Books; and Gordon Lish at Esquire—came on the scene, the publishing industry, both in the U.S. and abroad, experienced an “unprecedented expansion.” Exploring themes like kinship (responsibility to “fellow ethnics”) and homophily (a kind of “cultural gatekeeping”) Lambert, in prose best suited to academics, turns to specific texts to show how the literary establishment grew both nepotistic and meritocratic. Some of the author’s illuminating case studies involve the winners of the National Book Award from 1954 to 1974; Columbia University academic Lionel Trilling’s glowing blurbs for his students (their “shared Jewishness…clearly mattered in the relationships that developed between them”); “whisper novels” by women authors about their paternalistic editors; and the founding of Atheneum in 1959 by Alfred Knopf Jr.
A multilayered scholarly argument for the continued study of “the development of ethnic niches.”Pub Date: July 26, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-300-25142-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2022
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
A top-notch political memoir and serious exercise in practical politics for every reader.
In the first volume of his presidential memoir, Obama recounts the hard path to the White House.
In this long, often surprisingly candid narrative, Obama depicts a callow youth spent playing basketball and “getting loaded,” his early reading of difficult authors serving as a way to impress coed classmates. (“As a strategy for picking up girls, my pseudo-intellectualism proved mostly worthless,” he admits.) Yet seriousness did come to him in time and, with it, the conviction that America could live up to its stated aspirations. His early political role as an Illinois state senator, itself an unlikely victory, was not big enough to contain Obama’s early ambition, nor was his term as U.S. Senator. Only the presidency would do, a path he painstakingly carved out, vote by vote and speech by careful speech. As he writes, “By nature I’m a deliberate speaker, which, by the standards of presidential candidates, helped keep my gaffe quotient relatively low.” The author speaks freely about the many obstacles of the race—not just the question of race and racism itself, but also the rise, with “potent disruptor” Sarah Palin, of a know-nothingism that would manifest itself in an obdurate, ideologically driven Republican legislature. Not to mention the meddlings of Donald Trump, who turns up in this volume for his idiotic “birther” campaign while simultaneously fishing for a contract to build “a beautiful ballroom” on the White House lawn. A born moderate, Obama allows that he might not have been ideological enough in the face of Mitch McConnell, whose primary concern was then “clawing [his] way back to power.” Indeed, one of the most compelling aspects of the book, as smoothly written as his previous books, is Obama’s cleareyed scene-setting for how the political landscape would become so fractured—surely a topic he’ll expand on in the next volume.
A top-notch political memoir and serious exercise in practical politics for every reader.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5247-6316-9
Page Count: 768
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 15, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2020
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