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LOVES OF HARRIET BEECHER STOWE

Life and loves of a seminal figure in 19th-century American literature.

Portrait of the woman who wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin and changed America.

The life of Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–96) was unusual, especially for a woman of her era. Her father, Lyman Beecher, Boston’s thundering Abolitionist theologian, impressed upon young Harriet the importance of Calvinist family values. Henry Ward Beecher became America’s premier 19th-century preacher; Harriet, the conscience of its literature. McFarland (Hawthorne in Concord, 2004, etc.) mines Stowe’s correspondence to explain why she raised her quill: The salary of her husband, clergyman-academic Calvin Stowe, hardly supported their growing brood. Once writing—and later as family breadwinner—she drew upon various transformational experiences, first in light prose, then in more formidable work. Living in Cincinnati when Lyman founded Lane Theological Seminary, she absorbed that town’s abolitionist fervor—she was familiar with the Underground Railroad and researched slavery before writing her famous novel. McFarland’s detailing of the North-South political chasm over slavery, especially in 1852 as the serialization of Uncle Tom Cabin’s began, is not only scholarly, but stylishly dramatic. The author moves on to examine the immense popularity of Stowe’s work by showing how it rallied Northerners to Abolitionism while intensifying Southern rage. As the author of the first major American novel featuring a black hero, Stowe was a global celebrity, and McFarland rightly contextualizes Uncle Tom’s Cabin alongside her many other works. Stowe also lectured widely, and McFarland’s description of Stowe’s European travails offers a reflection on America’s anguished spirit. Among some of the “loves” to which McFarland alludes: Lord Byron’s widow, Walt Whitman and Abraham Lincoln (who may or may not have said, “So you’re the little lady who started the war”). As chapter titles indicate, there was Lyman, Henry Ward, other far-flung siblings, her husband and seven children, four of whom predeceased their mother. McFarland persuasively speculates that son Samuel’s untimely death clarified her take on Uncle Tom’s Cabin: If she could picture a slave mother sold away from her children—a heart-wrenching scene—she could picture it all.

Life and loves of a seminal figure in 19th-century American literature.

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2007

ISBN: 978-0-8021-1845-5

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Grove

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2007

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KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON

THE OSAGE MURDERS AND THE BIRTH OF THE FBI

Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.

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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

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WHEN BREATH BECOMES AIR

A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...

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A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.

Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”

A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.

Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016

ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6

Page Count: 248

Publisher: Random House

Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015

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