Smartly conceived, beautifully wrought campaign history, bound to entertain and inform.
Pulitzer Prize–winner Larson (Evolution: The Remarkable History of a Scientific Theory, 2004, etc.) vividly recounts America’s first overtly partisan election.
In 1799, the single man capable of papering over the young republic’s widening political divisions died in retirement at Mount Vernon. There had been no open campaign to succeed Washington in 1796 when the electoral provisions of the untested Constitution uncomfortably yoked Federalist President John Adams to Vice-President Thomas Jefferson, the acknowledged leader of the opposition Republicans. Now, the two prepared to face off in what became, and remains, the most vituperative and dramatic of all U.S. elections. Through newspapers, letters and speeches, Republicans hammered Federalists for offenses amounting to a betrayal of the revolution: their sponsorship of the Alien and Sedition Acts, their support of a standing army, their too-friendly disposition toward organized religion and their dangerous sympathies for monarchy. In turn, Federalists, badly split over Adams’s leadership, assailed Republicans for their godlessness and blind devotion to liberty at the expense of the public order and national defense, issues brought into high relief by the bloody excesses of the French Revolution. The colorful cast of Founders included Madison, Jay, Pinckney, Monroe and Samuel Adams; the behind-the-scenes machinations of High Federalist leader Alexander Hamilton and Republican organizer Aaron Burr were especially dramatic. Larson (History/Univ. of Georgia and Pepperdine Univ.) does justice to them all and demonstrates his storytelling mastery by lucidly recounting the political histories and procedures unique to each state and deftly delineating the issues that dominated the national debate. Astonishingly, the hard-fought, bitterly personal campaign resulted in an Electoral College tie between Jefferson and running-mate Burr, whose maddening refusal to defer to the Sage of Monticello encouraged Federalist mischief. It required 35 Congressional ballots before Jefferson finally prevailed.
Smartly conceived, beautifully wrought campaign history, bound to entertain and inform.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-7432-9316-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Free Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2007
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 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
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
