Coherent, compellingly passionate, rich in sometimes-startling and consistently well-founded insights.
A frank and perspicuous study of the watershed 1963 event in the Civil Rights Movement.
Rather than build their thoroughly researched account around Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, Williams and Long focus on what went on behind the scenes to organize the one-day March on Washington, thrash out a unified vision of its purpose in the face of conflicting agendas, and bring it off without sparking violence from either marchers or police. (There were, astonishingly, no event-related arrests.) As in their powerful profile of Jackie Robinson (Call Him Jack, 2022), the authors unflinchingly retain the racist language in many of their period quotes to illuminate the violent temper of the times. They also offer eye-opening portrayals of the generally idolized Kennedy brothers and scorching views of the secondary roles Black women were forced to take by the march’s male leaders. They brightly commend the courage and organizing skills of “gay, pacifist, socialist ex-convict” Bayard Rustin and highlight march director A. Philip Randolph’s dreams of working change through collective action as well as the rousing speeches of young firebrand John Lewis and others. Numerous photos and news clippings add immediacy to events, and though the main story closes with the dispersal of the crowd at the historic day’s end, rich troves of additional facts and questions posed to readers spur further research and reflection.
Coherent, compellingly passionate, rich in sometimes-startling and consistently well-founded insights. (source notes, image credits, index) (Nonfiction. 12-15)Pub Date: Aug. 29, 2023
ISBN: 9780374391744
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: June 8, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2023
In either iteration, a provocative counter to conventional, blinkered views of our national story.
A classic framing of this country’s history from a multicultural perspective, clumsily cut and recast into more simplified language for young readers.
Veering away from the standard “Master Narrative” to tell “the story of a nation peopled by the world,” the violence- and injustice-laden account focuses on minorities, from African- Americans (“the central minority throughout our country’s history”), Mexicans and Native Americans to Japanese, Vietnamese, Sikh, Russian Jewish and Muslim immigrants. Stefoff reduces Takaki’s scholarly but fluid narrative (1993, revised 2008) to choppy sentences and sound-bite quotes. She also adds debatable generalizations, such as a sweeping claim that Native Americans “lived outside of white society’s borders,” and an incorrect one that the Emancipation Proclamation “freed the slaves.” Readers may take a stronger interest in their own cultural heritage from this broad picture of the United States as, historically, a tapestry of ethnic identities that are “separate but also shared”—but being more readable and, by page count at least, only about a third longer, the original version won’t be out of reach of much of the intended audience, despite its denser prose.
In either iteration, a provocative counter to conventional, blinkered views of our national story. (endnotes, glossary, index) (Nonfiction. 12-15)Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-60980-416-9
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Seven Stories
Review Posted Online: July 21, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2012
Thorough to a fault, and for young readers at least, no replacement for Jim Murphy’s oldie but goodie The Long Road to...
Wagonloads of detail weigh down this overstuffed account of the Civil War’s most significant battle and its aftermath.
Martin builds his narrative around numerous eyewitness accounts, despite the implication of the subtitle. He covers events from the rival armies’ preliminary jockeying for position to Lee’s retreat, the heroic efforts to care for the thousands of wounded soldiers left behind, as well as the establishment some months later of the cemetery that was the occasion for Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. The battle itself, though, quickly becomes a dizzying tally of this regiment going here, that brigade charging there, the movements insufficiently supported by the small, hard-to-read battle maps. Overheated lines like “As the armies met in battle, the ground…soaked up the blood of Americans flowing into the soil” have a melodramatic effect. Moreover, as nearly everyone mentioned even once gets one or more period portraits, the illustrations become a tedious gallery of look-alike shots of scowling men with heavy facial hair. Still, the author does offer a cogent, carefully researched view of the battle and its significance in both the short and long terms.
Thorough to a fault, and for young readers at least, no replacement for Jim Murphy’s oldie but goodie The Long Road to Gettysburg (1992). (glossary, index, bibliography) (Nonfiction. 12-15)Pub Date: June 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-62087-532-2
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Sky Pony Press
Review Posted Online: March 26, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
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