Well-wrought, well-written and well-reasoned—a welcome infusion of calm good sense into a perennially controversial and...
A sophisticated discussion of the role of religion in the American Republic’s early years.
Waldman, co-founder and editor-in-chief of the religion website Beliefnet.com, offers a book sure to displease partisans on both sides of an increasingly intense debate that features candidates making obeisance to faith while anti-religious diatribes crowd the bookstore shelves. Rather than taking an “either/or” approach to the historic role of religion in the public sphere, the author argues for “both/and” thinking. Secularists and religionists alike cherry-pick the record in their respective takes on American history, he demonstrates. For example, the former neglect to note that the anti-establishment clause was intended for the federal government only and had no bearing on the states, while the latter fail to understand how deeply skeptical of religion the Founding Fathers were. Waldman traces his story from the days before the Revolution, when many colonies maintained official religions in order to keep Catholics, Baptists and other religious minorities in check. Colonies with more open policies, such as Pennsylvania, benefited economically as well as ecclesiastically by encouraging religious diversity, he argues. One of the book’s best sections shows that legislative coalitions and compromises shaped much of what is now considered sacred in the Constitution. Interspersed chapters detailing the spiritual beliefs of Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Adams and Madison delineate each Founder’s thoughts about the role government should play in religious life and that religion should play in civic life.
Well-wrought, well-written and well-reasoned—a welcome infusion of calm good sense into a perennially controversial and relevant subject.Pub Date: March 18, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-4000-6437-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2008
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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 Yorker staff 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
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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