An intelligent, sympathetic portrait that challenges popular views of the Howe family.
Historian Flavell reappraises the careers of two maligned British commanders in the Revolutionary War and shows how female relatives tried to burnish the men’s reputations.
In “the first whole-family history of the Howes,” the author focuses on the brothers Gen. William Howe, Richard Admiral Lord Howe, and, to a lesser degree, Brig. Gen. George Howe, who was killed near Fort Ticonderoga in the Seven Years’ War. With 10 offspring, the Howes’ aristocratic parents favored “the rather heartless tradition of recycling the dynastic names of dead children.” The early chapters move slowly as Flavell introduces generations of Georges and Sophias and Charlottes and remote events such as the War of Jenkins’ Ear. After 100 or so pages, as the Revolutionary War nears, the narrative gains—and retains—a momentum that effectively turns a group biography into a swiftly paced history of the war and its aftermath, when the public vilified William and Richard for their strategic missteps but later restored them to high esteem. Flavell balances accounts of battles in America with tales of how well-connected Howe women in England tried to advance the brothers’ careers in the press and elsewhere. In 1774, their sister made a noteworthy effort when she tried—over games of chess with Benjamin Franklin—to help Richard find a peaceful alternative to the looming war. Throughout, the author rebuts—sometimes convincingly—common views of the Howes, including that as commander of the British land forces in America, William showed “at the least profound character and professional flaws and, at worst, a conspiratorial ambition to promote the Howes and their quest to save the empire.” Flavell also labels as “probably not true” the rumors that William had a distracting affair with Elizabeth Lloyd Loring. The author offers much for historians to argue about and plenty for patient readers to enjoy.
An intelligent, sympathetic portrait that challenges popular views of the Howe family.Pub Date: July 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-63149-061-3
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Liveright/Norton
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2021
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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