Free land comes at a cost. Clarren’s memorable book, troubling and inspiring, seeks a humane path toward restitution.
A deft mix of personal and social history that recounts the transfer of Native American lands to non-Indigenous settlers, including Jews fleeing antisemitic violence.
Clarren, who has spent many years reporting on the West and “attempting to write articles that expand our fixed ideas about the region,” delivers a fascinating narrative that centers on a great irony: In the 19th century, the federal government removed Native peoples of the Great Plains to reservations and granted their stolen lands to immigrants, many displaced from lands of their own. Some of the author’s ancestors, Jews escaping tsarist Russia, wound up on Lakota land, settling on a patch of South Dakota prairie locals called “Jew Flats.” It was a transformative moment, for, driven from place to place, they “believed that having land was the hedge against exile,” protection from being further uprooted. Locals still remember the family, whose descendants left long ago, and a divisive effort to transform Jew Flats into an oilfield. Taking a larger view, Clarren observes that many Jewish immigrants, suspected of being something other than white and American, did their best to assume the interests of the conquerors as their own, even though, in real terms, they had more in common with the dispossessed Native peoples. Ranging widely across the Plains and reporting deeply from reservation lands and neighboring non-Indigenous communities, Clarren inserts a Talmudic adage that if a homeowner knows that even a single beam has been stolen from someone else, it’s that owner’s duty to make amends. She returns to it with the observation that the theft of Native lands undergirds much American wealth, for which reason she is working to return what she reckons to be her share of her family’s holdings of yore, “our piece of the stolen beam.”
Free land comes at a cost. Clarren’s memorable book, troubling and inspiring, seeks a humane path toward restitution.Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2023
ISBN: 9780593655078
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Aug. 7, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2023
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.
Documenting perilous times.
In his most recent behind-the-scenes account of political power and how it is wielded, Woodward synthesizes several narrative strands, from the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel to the 2024 presidential campaign. Woodward’s clear, gripping storytelling benefits from his legendary access to prominent figures and a structure of propulsive chapters. The run-up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is tense (if occasionally repetitive), as a cast of geopolitical insiders try to divine Vladimir Putin’s intent: “Doubt among allies, the public and among Ukrainians meant valuable time and space for Putin to maneuver.” Against this backdrop, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham implores Donald Trump to run again, notwithstanding the former president’s denial of his 2020 defeat. This provides unwelcome distraction for President Biden, portrayed as a thoughtful, compassionate lifetime politico who could not outrace time, as demonstrated in the June 2024 debate. Throughout, Trump’s prevarications and his supporters’ cynicism provide an unsettling counterpoint to warnings provided by everyone from former Joint Chief of Staff Mark Milley to Vice President Kamala Harris, who calls a second Trump term a likely “death knell for American democracy.” The author’s ambitious scope shows him at the top of his capabilities. He concludes with these unsettling words: “Based on my reporting, Trump’s language and conduct has at times presented risks to national security—both during his presidency and afterward.”
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2024
ISBN: 9781668052273
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
IN THE NEWS
PERSPECTIVES
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.
A former New York City dancer reflects on her zesty heyday in the 1970s.
Discovered on a Manhattan street in 2020 and introduced on Stanton’s Humans of New York Instagram page, Johnson, then 76, shares her dynamic history as a “fiercely independent” Black burlesque dancer who used the stage name Tanqueray and became a celebrated fixture in midtown adult theaters. “I was the only black girl making white girl money,” she boasts, telling a vibrant story about sex and struggle in a bygone era. Frank and unapologetic, Johnson vividly captures aspects of her former life as a stage seductress shimmying to blues tracks during 18-minute sets or sewing lingerie for plus-sized dancers. Though her work was far from the Broadway shows she dreamed about, it eventually became all about the nightly hustle to simply survive. Her anecdotes are humorous, heartfelt, and supremely captivating, recounted with the passion of a true survivor and the acerbic wit of a weathered, street-wise New Yorker. She shares stories of growing up in an abusive household in Albany in the 1940s, a teenage pregnancy, and prison time for robbery as nonchalantly as she recalls selling rhinestone G-strings to prostitutes to make them sparkle in the headlights of passing cars. Complemented by an array of revealing personal photographs, the narrative alternates between heartfelt nostalgia about the seedier side of Manhattan’s go-go scene and funny quips about her unconventional stage performances. Encounters with a variety of hardworking dancers, drag queens, and pimps, plus an account of the complexities of a first love with a drug-addled hustler, fill out the memoir with personality and candor. With a narrative assist from Stanton, the result is a consistently titillating and often moving story of human struggle as well as an insider glimpse into the days when Times Square was considered the Big Apple’s gloriously unpolished underbelly. The book also includes Yee’s lush watercolor illustrations.
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.Pub Date: July 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-27827-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2022
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