A memorable portrait of an era of official lawlessness in the name of law and order, one with echoes to this day.
Vigorous history of the anarchist movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
In this well-written narrative, history professor Willrich, author of Pox: An American History, focuses on the agitators who immigrated to the U.S. and quickly became involved in the Gilded Age struggle for workers’ rights—some peacefully, some with bombs, some using both nonviolent and violent strategies. The author also investigates the invention of the modern surveillance state, tracing it to “the nation’s extraordinarily brutal and explicitly racist colonial war in the Philippines,” a horror show of mock trials and summary executions that, applied to the anarchist movement in the U.S., put soldiers on the streets to monitor and suppress American citizens. As Willrich writes, many lawmakers and law enforcement agents thrived in the era of Palmer raids and the post-Haymarket crackdown on suspected labor activists. The NYPD bomb squad, for instance, collaborated with the Justice Department to prosecute Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman and to have them deported to Russia after New York’s U.S. attorney characterized them as “exceedingly dangerous to the peace and security of the United States.” Against a broad range of oppressors stood the anarchists themselves, who organized workers in places such as the West Virginia coal fields and Chicago steel mills, as well as numerous sympathizers—and, more, devotees of civil liberties, including a lawyer named Louis Post, who wrote in an editorial, “Public indignation at the reckless violence of a few foreigners overshadows all other thought and affords an excellent screen behind which freedom of assembly, of speech, of the press, is being strangled.” As Willrich capably shows, the efforts of Post and like-minded lawyers and government officials helped slow the wave of deportations, established truly legal procedures for proving the anarchists’ supposed crimes, and “breathed new life into the Bill of Rights.”
A memorable portrait of an era of official lawlessness in the name of law and order, one with echoes to this day.Pub Date: Oct. 31, 2023
ISBN: 9781541697379
Page Count: 480
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2023
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
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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