All chroniclers of popular history should be required to study Ackroyd’s writing, his methodology, and the totality of his...
Ackroyd (Queer City: Gay London from the Romans to the Present Day, 2017, etc.) fans rejoice! The fourth volume of the author’s History of England series has arrived.
As usual, history buffs will find plenty to ponder, and casual readers will enjoy Ackroyd’s storytelling manner as he continues to expose little-known facts of British history—e.g., the Bank of England was originally a subscription effort, and the pound sterling became the monetary standard under Sir Isaac Newton. In the third volume, Ackroyd dealt with the Glorious Revolution of 1688; here, he digs deeply into the financial revolution under William and Mary. The Bank of England, pound, and the stock exchange were initiated to fund the latest war with France. New finances encouraged the lower gentry—those with money and land but no lineage—in their slavery to the false gods of aspiring “middling” classes. The time period also saw a significant agricultural revolution, with an increase in enclosures of large estates; wide-scale farmers looked to new methods of drainage, hedging and rotating crops, putting many peasant farmers out of business and forcing them to the cities. The conversion from wood to coal required miners; the arrival of steam gave birth to mills and factories, which required the small hands of women and children; and the union with Scotland created the largest free-trade area in the world. While the Enlightenment barely touched England’s shores, the Industrial Revolution could only have been born there, where geography, material and mineral riches, and thriving colonial trade all combined to make the perfect spot. The loss of America showed Britain that it was easier to trade with colonies than to rule them. In this dizzying era, there was also time for the birth of the Fourth Estate because Parliament forgot to extend a censorship law, giving rise to the golden age of political journalism. Through it all, the author is a delightful guide.
All chroniclers of popular history should be required to study Ackroyd’s writing, his methodology, and the totality of his treatment of his subjects.Pub Date: Oct. 10, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-250-00364-5
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 24, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2017
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
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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