George's in-depth look at a revered TV show is one of those rare music-centric books that will transcend its subject's core...
Put on your dancing shoes, and get funky with this romp through the history of a cultural touchstone.
George (Thriller: The Musical Life of Michael Jackson, 2010, etc.) points out that when the music-and-dance show Soul Train premiered in 1970 on a local Chicago TV station, the “landscape of black images on television and in film…was pretty barren.” Was the country in need of such an entity? Perhaps not, but sometimes the country doesn't realize what it needs until it's available. Enter Don Cornelius, an opportunistic, passionate DJ who figured out that Americans (or at least a healthy percentage of them) were ready for a black version of American Bandstand, a show where up-and-coming soul and R&B artists could perform their latest hits. The affable Cornelius was right, and soon enough, Soul Train was a national phenomenon (even though it tailed off in importance before it ended in 2006), certainly an entity that, four decades later, is worthy of a serious re-examination from a serious writer. Those familiar with the prolific George’s work might be surprised that a writer known for his serious studies of African-American culture would tackle a subject that's so flat-out fun, but his palpable love for the show makes it obvious that this is a passion project, a topic that gave him the opportunity to relive one of the joys of his youth. George's approach—and mix of narrative and oral history—is the ideal way to tackle the topic, since the combination of voices allows readers to feel and enjoy the love, the peace and the hair grease. The author chronicles his interviews with the performers, but most importantly, he got Cornelius on tape before he died in 2012.
George's in-depth look at a revered TV show is one of those rare music-centric books that will transcend its subject's core fan base. Even those with just a casual interest in Soul Train will be happy to take this trip.Pub Date: April 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-06-222103-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2014
PROFILES
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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