Review by Choice Review
Bellesiles (Central Connecticut State Univ.) writes that 1877 was arguably the most violent year in US history in which the country was not involved in a war. Striving to put the events of 1877 into a national context and avoid the usual overemphasis on the east coast, the author details the violence surrounding those events and the search for social order. In anecdotal fashion, Bellesiles chronicles the violence in each region of the country, including the white supremacists in the South, the Indian wars on the Great Plains, and a major railroad workers strike that nearly crippled the country. The crux of Bellesiles's argument rests in the way Americans struggled to understand and come to terms with the new post-Civil War social order. In doing so, the author argues that a creative explosion of inventors and artists took place, but was overshadowed by Americans' tendencies for violent resolutions to problems. Rebounding from past controversies (e.g., his discredited Arming America, CH, Feb'01, 38-3484), Bellesiles is able to create a wonderful read that is sure to appeal to those interested in the challenges of creating a post-Civil War society. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries. M. A. Byron Young Harris College
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
Lionized with the prestigious Bancroft Prize, Bellesiles' Arming America (2000) scandalized historians when a committee of academics found him guilty of unprofessional and misleading work. The Bancroft was rescinded, and Bellesiles resigned his professorship from Emory. The present work is his bid to redeem his reputation. Sizing up a newsworthy year of a disputed presidential election, the termination of Reconstruction, the army's pursuit of the Nez Percé Indians, a nationwide railroad strike, and gunplay in the Old West, Bellesiles extensively mines a verifiable source: newspapers. Quoting dispatches from small towns to burgeoning cities, Bellesiles succeeds in conveying an unsettled time of economic depression and class and racial conflict. A resumption of civil war appeared possible; southern blacks were terrorized back into subservience; and industrial strife upended Pittsburgh and St. Louis. Bellesiles also profiles a number of individuals prominent in 1877: both scoundrels such as Billy the Kid and reformers such as Frances Willard, an activist in the temperance and women's suffrage movements. Absent challenges to its footnotes, this work should revive its author's standing as it informs readers about 1877.--Taylor, Gilbert Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
If you think the United States has problems today, try 1877. That single year, according to historian Bellesiles, saw an unprecedented surge in lynchings, racism, homicides, army attacks on Indians, labor violence (including a near national general strike), quack theories to explain it all, and a political crisis whose resolution on the backs of African-Americans scarred the nation until Johnson's Great Society. Offering a thorough review of this crisis-ridden year, Bellesiles, author of the controversial Arming America, makes the case that 1877 was also a year of breakthroughs in thought and creativity (Thomas Edison made the first voice recording, and Wannamaker's, the first department store, opened). But it is the violence that preoccupies the author, and he attributes it at least in part to Americans, in the midst of a depression, struggling "to come to terms with their new industrial society...." No reader will come away from this sobering work without a greater understanding of violence so extreme that contemporaries and numerous historians have commented on it (one historians called it "a symbol of shock, of the possible crumbling of society"). It's not easy reading, but it is solid, deeply informed history. (Aug.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Emphasizing that America, despite its professed ideals, has an enduring legacy of antagonism toward "the other," the controversial Bellesiles (Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture) turns to a time of intense social, cultural, and intellectual turmoil in America. This was the year of the Great Railroad Strike, but Bellesiles also considers the impact of the disputed 1876 presidential election, the end of Reconstruction, economic depression, battles between the army and Plains Indians, and entrepreneurial events such as the forming of the Bell Telephone Association. Thus, he faces the challenge of making the case for one year being historically pivotal, even transformative. He sketches villains and heroes, famous and obscure, from Crazy Horse, Susan B. Anthony, and E.L. Godkin to the surprisingly radical Rutherford B. Hayes, women's health pioneer Mary Putnam Jacobi, and Louisiana black political activist Henry Adams, with the goal of letting them speak for themselves. He contends that class replaced race as the main area of American social conflict. Verdict Interested, discerning readers with backgrounds in history are invited to examine this work, which combines thematic, narrative, and interpretive strains, revealed in pungent and subjective phrasing. It can be compared to older titles such as Robert V. Bruce's 1877: Year of Violence and Philip Foner's The Great Labor Uprising of 1877.-Frederick J. Augustyn Jr., Library of Congress (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
