The author’s highly readable style and ability to pinpoint the most relevant facts make this a perfect book for any student...
The renowned historian explores America’s wars through its presidents.
In another masterful work of research, NBC News presidential historian Beschloss (Presidential Courage: Brave Leaders and How They Changed America, 1789-1989, 2007, etc.) demonstrates his erudite grasp of the history of the executive branch. The Founders gave Congress the power to “declare” (not make) war; the executive has power only to repel attacks. The author begins with the War of 1812 and notes that it was the most unpopular war ever, including Vietnam. As Beschloss writes, “the 1812 conflict proved to be the first major test of this constitutional system for waging war. The Mexican-American War, under James Polk, began after the Thornton Affair in 1846, when American troops actually provoked an attack. That gave Polk the excuse to pursue Manifest Destiny and seize land all the way to the Pacific Ocean; he also expanded slavery. Again, this went against the Founders’ wish to end the monarchical habit of waging war for secret reasons under false pretenses. In all American wars, opponents have been marginalized as unpatriotic, but Lincoln and the Civil War were different. He wouldn’t ask Congress for a declaration of war because he would never accept the legality of secession. He did, however, wait patiently for the attack on Fort Sumter, and his extraordinary authority was affirmed by Congress and the courts. The Spanish-American War was triggered by the explosion of the Maine in Havana Harbor. While he didn’t necessarily want Cuba, it gave President William McKinley the chance to annex Hawaii and, in a clear case of mission creep, the Philippines, Guam, and Puerto Rico. On another tack, Woodrow Wilson did all he could to avoid war. Beschloss goes on to skillfully cover World War II and Vietnam. As he clearly shows throughout this illuminating narrative, during every war, the president has received extraordinary powers; some used it well, while others abused it.
The author’s highly readable style and ability to pinpoint the most relevant facts make this a perfect book for any student of American history and its presidents.Pub Date: Oct. 9, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-307-40960-7
Page Count: 752
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 4, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
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
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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