A valuable addition to World War I and civil-rights scholarship on a subject too frequently overlooked.
The story of the Harlem Hellfighters, an all-black regiment who fought against the Germans in World War I and against racism at home.
Even though racism was still widespread in American politics in 1916, there was a dire need for soldiers at the front. Despite protests from Southern politicians who feared that allowing blacks to serve would subvert Jim Crow laws, the 369th Infantry Regiment was formed, led by white officers William Hayward, Hamilton Fish and Arthur Little. Training had not yet begun when violence erupted, as white supremacists sought every opportunity to form lynch mobs. Upon arriving in Europe, the 369th fought with the French Army under Gen. Henri Gouraud, who welcomed them with open arms. The 369th proved their mettle in battle, with men like Henry Johnson becoming war heroes, earning the regiment their Hellfighters name. Nelson (Left for Dead: A Young Man’s Search for Justice for the USS Indianapolis, 2002, etc.) seamlessly interweaves the military narrative with vivid firsthand accounts. The Hellfighters were a true brotherhood whose influence extended beyond the trenches. Jim Europe, a noted musician, stunned the French with jazz interpretations of popular French songs, instigating a French obsession with jazz in the postwar era. Noble Sissle became a hit songwriter and fought for the recognition of black artists. Little, Haywood and Fish all became active proponents of civil rights. The Hellfighters fought a war on two fronts and displayed incredible fortitude in the face of prejudice, racial violence and the ever-present gas and machine-gun fire. Nelson offers a nuanced, in-depth portrait of this group of ordinary men who fought with inspiring courage and dignity.
A valuable addition to World War I and civil-rights scholarship on a subject too frequently overlooked.Pub Date: May 18, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-465-00317-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Basic Civitas
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2009
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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