As he ends this relevant and well-grounded book, Williams tells Trump that African-Americans have “a lot” to lose, “far...
During the presidential campaign, candidate Donald Trump reached out to African-American voters by asking, “what the hell do you have to lose?” Here is a cogent response from a veteran journalist.
Williams (Muzzled: The Assault on Honest Debate, 2011, etc.), currently a columnist at The Hill, provides detailed answers to Trump’s question regarding six different realms of government discrimination against African-Americans, using the Civil Rights Act as approved by Congress in 1964 as his guide for selecting those elements. Other key laws include the Fair Housing Act and the Voting Rights Act. In each area, the author documents the dreadful early record of the Trump administration, followed by a succinct history of the civil rights gains made against stiff opposition during the second half of the 20th century. As Williams focuses on the gains, he singles out a primary advocate in each of the six realms: voting rights (Bob Moses), education (James Meredith), public accommodations (Everett Dirksen), equal rights legislation (James Baldwin), employment (A. Philip Randolph), and housing (Robert Weaver). Williams is an accomplished storyteller; as a result, the oft-documented historical gains in each chapter feel fresh again. Trump has been shamed countless times for translating his racist tendencies into abhorrent public policy, so Williams does not mount any groundbreaking attacks. However, his skillful succinctness makes his anti-Trump commentaries often devastating. Some readers might consider the author’s account of past gains overly enthusiastic. He notes that while never deviating from accepted factual accounts, he intends for the historical context of the gains to spawn inspiration. Williams writes that he feels optimistic about the post-Trump future for civil rights because those on the correct side of the law can rely on far more resources, digital and otherwise, than their predecessors.
As he ends this relevant and well-grounded book, Williams tells Trump that African-Americans have “a lot” to lose, “far more, it appears, than [Trump] will ever know.”Pub Date: Sept. 25, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5417-8826-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: June 17, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2018
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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