A well-researched, lively entry into the current debate about the role of science in a democracy.
Shachtman (American Iconoclast: The Life and Times of Eric Hoffer, 2011, etc.) makes a strong case for the importance of science and technology in the creation of the United States.
“Today,” writes the author, “the centrality to the Founding Fathers of their enlightened, scientific outlook has been obscured.” He takes a variety of familiar examples—e.g. George Washington's experience as a surveyor and plans for a complex canal system; Benjamin Franklin's scientific eminence; Thomas Jefferson's wide-ranging scientific interests; Tom Paine's less well-known design of an iron-span bridge; and John Adams' love of astronomy—to make a larger point. Acceptance of the scientific method of verification and experimentation played a central role in the Founding Fathers' confidence that they could build a new nation based on a radical vision of the rights of man. They were able to unify the population and its leaders in a shared worldview broadly defined by key figures of the Enlightenment. Shachtman reveals a direct connection between the political and scientific correspondence committees in the Colonies that laid the groundwork for coordinated action in the period leading up to the Revolution. Botanist Peter Collinson and others sponsored Americans for membership in the Royal Society. Collinson's networks promoted Benjamin Franklin's work and encouraged botanical research and astronomical observations in the Colonies. The scientists also fiercely debated the issue of small pox vaccination, and the author suggests, its adoption by George Washington avoided a potentially calamitous spread of the disease among soldiers. Shachtman also points to Jefferson's inclusion of the phrase “the pursuit of happiness” in his draft of the Declaration of Independence. The author traces it to a book on moral philosophy, The Religion of Nature Delineated, which was widely read in the Colonies and was authored by William Wollaston, who claimed that “the greatest happiness lay in the discovery of truth.”
A well-researched, lively entry into the current debate about the role of science in a democracy.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-137-27825-8
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Review Posted Online: July 29, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
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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