A grounded, rigorous study of a violent, clandestine organization.
An independent scholar explores a secret 19th-century group in this nonfiction book.
“Rumors and mythology have always surrounded” the Knights of the Golden Circle, writes Farmer in this well-researched history that methodically separates fact from fiction. Founded in 1854 by some of Texas’ most powerful enslavers and landowners, the organization envisioned the state as the epicenter of a slave empire whose territories extended into Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean. Placing the KGC within a larger historical context, the author notes that the seeds of the organization can be found “at the very beginning of the colonization of North America,” as enslavers coalesced power and influence in French, Dutch, British, and Spanish colonies, from New Amsterdam to New Orleans. Enslavers and early American political leaders like George Washington were also attracted to secretive groups like the Free Masons and the Society of Cincinnati, a clandestine society headed by Washington until his death. Moreover, the KGC, the author argues, flourished in the heated, conspiratorial climate of the 1850s, fomenting divisive rhetoric about Northern abolitionists, securing armaments for an impending civil war, and even playing a behind-the-scenes role in the attack at Fort Sumter. From its embrace of slavery and civil war to genocidal plans to rid Texas of Native Americans, the KGC thrived on violence. The author of two previous books on Texas history, Farmer has a firm command of the complex network of powerful politicians and landowners at play in KGC plots. Like most organized criminal operations, the KGC had a hierarchical structure that served to “isolate and protect its true leadership from prosecution.” Despite this research obstacle, the author bases his account on archival and primary source material left behind by KGC members. The book also has a firm grasp of the relevant historical literature on Texas as well as the Civil War, and is backed by an impressive body of endnotes. But at almost 400 pages, the volume is at times a bit unwieldy and could have used tightening.
A grounded, rigorous study of a violent, clandestine organization.Pub Date: Feb. 23, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-59211-087-2
Page Count: 382
Publisher: Vita Histria
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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