An authoritative history of the debates and brutality that made our world.
Five centuries of persecution and resistance.
In the 150 years after Spanish conquistadors arrived in the Americas, the Indigenous population dropped by roughly 90%, writes Grandin, a historian who has written perceptive books about corporate and governmental iniquity, among them Fordlandia and The Empire of Necessity. Native people were enslaved, felled by disease, disemboweled with swords. According to the book’s conscience—16th-century Spanish priest Bartolomé de las Casas, an early and outspoken critic of violent colonialism—his countrymen blithely tortured Indigenous children. English colonists committed countless atrocities of their own, and while Grandin describes these and subsequent evils in necessary detail, he’s primarily interested in the intellectual, political, and moral battles over what it means to be American. Many in Mexico and countries to its south, who’d “thought themselves Americans,” he writes, seem to have first found their self-definition challenged in the 1820s by an American diplomat who didn’t want Mexico calling itself Estados Unidos Mexicanos. Against this backdrop of contested identity, Grandin’s sweeping narrative leaves no major event unexplored, chronicling the horrors of slavery in the U.S., wars against Spanish colonialism in South America, and the CIA’s reckless meddling in Latin America. Grandin also spotlights lesser-known developments, such as the resentment stoked by the Marshall Plan, which rebuilt postwar Europe, in part with resources extracted from Latin America. The book’s most fertile throughline concerns willful moral blindness that caused incalculable suffering—and, conversely, principled opposition to invasion and exploitation. As early as the 16th century, Grandin writes, Spain’s subjugation of Indigenous people inspired England’s repression of the Irish. Later, God-fearing Americans considered it benevolent to give human beings as gifts to respected elders. More recently, Grandin details, Latin America’s intellectual movements—in literature, history, economics—proved immensely influential in their “persistent opposition to intervention and conquest.”
An authoritative history of the debates and brutality that made our world.Pub Date: April 22, 2025
ISBN: 9780593831250
Page Count: 737
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 18, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2025
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
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.
Words that made a nation.
Isaacson is known for expansive biographies of great thinkers (and Elon Musk), but here he pens a succinct, stimulating commentary on the Founding Fathers’ ode to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” His close reading of the Declaration of Independence’s second sentence, published to mark the 250th anniversary of the document’s adoption, doesn’t downplay its “moral contradiction.” Thomas Jefferson enslaved hundreds of people yet called slavery “a cruel war against human nature” in his first draft of the Declaration. All but 15 of the document’s 56 signers owned enslaved people. While the sentence in question asserted “all men are created equal” and possess “unalienable rights,” the Founders “consciously and intentionally” excluded women, Native Americans, and enslaved people. And yet the sentence is powerful, Isaacson writes, because it names a young nation’s “aspirations.” He mounts a solid defense of what ought to be shared goals, among them economic fairness, “moral compassion,” and a willingness to compromise. “Democracy depends on this,” he writes. Isaacson is excellent when explaining how Enlightenment intellectuals abroad influenced the founders. Benjamin Franklin, one of the Declaration’s “five-person drafting committee,” stayed in David Hume’s home for a month in the early 1770s, “discussing ideas of natural rights” with the Scottish philosopher. Also strong is Isaacson’s discussion of the “edits and tweaks” made to Jefferson’s draft. As recommended by Franklin and others, the changes were substantial, leaving Jefferson “distraught.” Franklin, who emerges as the book’s hero, helped establish municipal services, founded a library, and encouraged religious diversity—the kind of civic-mindedness that we could use more of today, Isaacson reminds us.
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781982181314
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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