Lemann relies on his well-developed skills as a longtime journalist to weave the specific and the abstract into a narrative...
A fresh account of the magnitude of inequality in America and how it came to be.
New Yorker staff writer Lemann (Emeritus, Dean/Columbia Journalism School; Redemption: The Last Battle of the Civil War, 2006, etc.) turns to complex theory to explain why income inequality has deepened in conjunction with the fracturing of social bonds between and among the ultrawealthy, middle-class residents, and those struggling with poverty. The author posits that three phases, dating back about 100 years, explain much of the upheaval: the era of powerful institutions, including government, political parties, massive corporations, massive labor unions, and affinity groups based on ethnicity; the era of transactions that often bypassed those institutions, mostly through Silicon Valley and Wall Street; and now, the era of internet-enabled entities such as Google, Apple, and Facebook. Lemann chooses one individual to explicate each phase: New Deal economist Adolf Berle as “Institution Man,” Harvard Business School professor Michael Jensen as “Transaction Man,” and LinkedIn co-creator Reid Hoffman as “Network Man.” Though the author’s high-level theorizing is confusing at times, he wisely offers general readers a solid foundation by discussing the impact of each era on citizens in specific neighborhoods, especially a neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago called Chicago Lawn. In that setting, he provides sharp portraits of a white male automobile dealer, an African American woman who migrated from the Deep South to fend off virulent racism in the neighborhood, and other residents struggling to make sense of the increasing economic inequality plaguing much of the country. The desires of Berle, Jensen, and Hoffman to create an orderly, prosperous society allowed a small slice of the citizenry to thrive beyond their wildest dreams but left the vast majority to struggle consistently with poverty.
Lemann relies on his well-developed skills as a longtime journalist to weave the specific and the abstract into a narrative that is intellectually challenging.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-374-27788-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
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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