This colorful narrative succeeds at bringing four historically distant lives closer to us. Tillyard (The Impact of Modernism, not reviewed) reveals the characters of four well-to-do Englishwomen who rode the shifting cultural currents between 1740 and the onset of the Victorian age. While thorough research accounts in part for the range and reach of Aristocrats, the privileged lives of the four sisters themselves gives the author unusual access to extraordinary stories. As the daughters of the second Duke of Richmond (descended from an illegitimate son of Charles II, he was a a cabinet minister and a gentleman-scientist), these intelligent, well-educated women were exposed to the newest ideas of the 18th century, as well as to the latest plays, books, and fashions. Over the course of their lives, each would make strong choices and live—for better or worse—with the consequences. Against her parents' wishes, Caroline Lennox married for love an ungainly, politically ambitious M.P. who nearly became prime minister of England; their elopement created a scandal in London. Her canny younger sister Emily married the senior peer of Ireland when she was 15; she spent his fortune freely and bore him 19 children. Louisa Lennox wed Ireland's richest man. Sarah, the youngest, was courted by King George III, who ultimately humiliated her by marrying a German princess. The Lennox women bore children who became important cultural figures—indeed revolutionaries; Emily's son Edward participated in the Irish Rebellion of the 1790s. Tillyard is adept at showing how the next generation's radicalism was a product of, as well as a reaction against, the family heritage. Using thousands of letters exchanged among the sisters, their lovers, their children, and their friends, Tillyard reconstructs the sisters' relationships to one another, to the others in their lives, and to the changing culture around them. Although the formal history could be more adeptly integrated, Tillyard generally brings the women and their extraordinary world to life.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-374-10305-4
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1994
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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