The Seminole War is unique because it combined the goal of Indian removal with a campaign to recapture a large number of escaped slaves — many of whom had chosen a more benevolent bondage under masters from the Civilized Tribes. Meltzer describes the ways of the newly formed Seminole tribe (which was principally a southern offshoot of the Creeks) by calling on the observations of contemporary traveller William Bartram. But while the Seminoles were establishing a unique lifestyle and welcoming large number of former slaves — both as free neighbors and as bondsmen — Congress was beginning to debate the annexation of Florida because, as Henry Clay said, "It fills a space in our imagination." Some of the war's background, including Tecumseh's call to arms and the tactics practiced by the whites in obtaining treaties, will be familiar to those who've read about the Cherokees' removal from Georgia; and the rhetoric of the war's supporters, who renamed bloodhounds "peace hounds" and opined in congressional debates that "we should not stop to inquire whether your war was just or unjust. . .We should hold it to be out country's cause. . .", has a tragically contemporary ring. As usual, Meltzer's strength lies in his conscientious crediting of his sources, his ability to select apt quotations from primary materials, and his talent for illuminating personalities without undue fictionalization. This dramatic, self-contained case study brings the researches of John K. Mahon (History of the Seminole War, 1967) and the earlier studies of Kenneth Porter on Seminole-black relationships before a popular audience.
Pub Date: Oct. 16, 1972
ISBN: 156164305X
Page Count: 194
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1972
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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