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Richard A. Serrano is a Pulitzer Prize-winning former Washington correspondent for the Los Angeles Times. He spent forty-five years covering the Pentagon, the wars in Haiti and the Middle East, the Justice Department, the FBI, and the War on Terror. He is the author of four other books and lives in mehr anzeigen Fairfax, Virginia. weniger anzeigen

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Diese Rezension wurde für LibraryThing Early Reviewers geschrieben.
Summoned at Midnight by Richard A Serrano looks at the period of the 1950s and early 1960s on the military's death row. Seventeen men on death row, yet how they were ultimately treated makes a very stark contrast to how different Americans are treated, then and now.

This is not about whether these men were guilty or not guilty. It is not about whether any single one of them did or did not deserve the death penalty. These men were all convicted of rape and/or murder and sentenced to death. That is a starting point as far as the most blatant aspect of the "justice" system's racism. Indeed, the racism that ran all the way through to the White House administrations of both Eisenhower and Kennedy.

Serrano illustrates the systemic racism in the military in exploring Pfc Bennett's specific case. He was the last man executed and his execution was on the hands of both administrations. While there was clearly no real attempt for actual justice in Bennett's investigation (using the term loosely) and trial, any hope for a reasonable outcome rested in the hands of stateside lawyers, judges, and politicians.

So seventeen men, all convicted of what were, at the time, capital offenses. Each and every white man was given public support, legal help, and ultimately was spared execution. And freed to walk among us, as they say. Yet each and every black man was afforded little to no support for appeal and letters from family and friends fell on deaf ears. Eisenhower had absolutely no problem with commutation of every white soldier's sentence. But he felt he needed to send a message with the black soldiers. This was the beginning of the era of integration in the military and Eisenhower was nothing if he wasn't old school military. Thus a message to be sent in the form of human lives.

Hope was high, or as high as could be expected, when Kennedy was elected and Bennett was still alive. But ultimately, with the Bay of Pigs fiasco and the centennial of the Civil War, Kennedy opted for the politically expedient decision to not commute the sentence. Again, another message sent, this time to white Dixiecrat voters, in the form of a human life.

All of these messages being sent are all in the form of dead black men. Sadly, this is not just a chapter out of the history books. This is a direct reflection of our current so-called justice system, where laws are unevenly enforced and sentences are based as much on skin color as on the actual offense. The messages now are to those who are racist and support the current racist regime (as well as the ones before this one, just more in the open now) and those who profit both directly and indirectly off the mass incarceration of people of color. As a country we have progressed very little. And a good bit of the progress toward being a more ethical and moral nation was lost when the immoral cult of Evangelicalism put a moron in office, with the help of their ally, Russia.

Highly recommend this for readers who want to have some idea whether there really was and/or is a difference in how our justice system (doesn't) work. There isn't really anything here to refute as liberal propaganda as some brain dead people will want to do. 17 convicted men, all of the same or similar crimes, yet only the black men were executed. The explanation is not simple, but it is simple to see.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via LibraryThing Early Reviewers.
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pomo58 | Jun 4, 2019 |
American Endurance
Author: Richard A Serrano
Publisher: Smithsonian Books
Published In: Washington, DC
Date: 2016
Pgs: 260

_________________________________________________

REVIEW MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS

Summary:
1893 Chicago World’s Fair. The Fair refused the inclusion of Buffalo Bill Cody. Well, he’d show them. He set up his Wild West Show right next to the World’s Fair and sponsored a thousand mile Cowboy Race that would end at his show. First man across the finish line would get a gold-plated Colt revolver. The World’s Fair was promoting modernity and the end of the cowboy age, except no one told the cowboys. Nine men tore across Middle America from Chadron, Nebraska to Chicago. And chaos ensued. Cheating, riding the rails, private buggies, it took three days and a showdown before a winner could be determined.
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Genre:
Nonfiction
Sports
Individual Sports
Horses
Racing
History of Sports
Sports and Outdoors

Why this book:
Cowboys and the nadir of the Old West
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Favorite Character:
Rattlesnake Pete and Old Joe Gillespie.

The Feel:
The deaths being mentioned in the story, before the race even starts, are setting the tone that just living in these harsh environs was difficult, much less racing a thousand miles through them.

If it was all this much doom and gloom, and rats and locusts, and such, why did anyone stay in The West? How bad must it have been for these folks back in the civilized East?

Favorite Scene / Quote:
The story of No-Flesh, the Indian, and Mrs Peterson’s donuts is greatness. She is cooking donuts and a group of Indians, lead by No-Flesh, pushed into her house. They refuse to leave and she keeps cooking donuts. They keep eating donuts. Her husband returns home and manages to convince them to leave. Later, No-Flesh returns with his wife and wants Mr Peterson to trade wives with him.

“They are the ruin of the country,” complained an old trail driver from Texas in 1884, frustrated with farmers. “They have everlastingly, eternally, now and forever, destroyed the best grazing land in the world. The range country, sir, was never intended for raising farm truck. It was intended for cattle and horses, and was the best stock-raising land on earth until they got to turning over sode, improving the country, as they call it. Lord forgive them for such improvements! It makes me sick to think of it. I am sick enough to need two doctors, a druggery, and a mineral spring, when I think of onions and Irish potatoes growing where mustang ponies should be exercising, and where four-year-old steers should be getting ripe for market.”

Pacing:
The pace is drug down by the circuitous Humane Society narrative.

Plot Holes/Out of Character:
With as much time as is being spent on pioneering, Chadron, Nebraska, and Buffalo Bill, it’s beginning to leave me with the feeling that there isn’t much to the story of the race. Or the race, itself, would make a much shorter book. A long form book on pioneer life and Nebraska, another book on Buffalo Bill, and, then, a shorter book about The Great Cowboy Race may have been more in order.

Hmm Moments:
The Children’s Blizzard, I remember reading about it in 1 of the Little House on the Prairie books. I thought it was a pastiche of many Winters though. Never realized that there was a killer storm that caught that many school children on their way home from school.

WTF Moments:
The story of the two sisters getting lose in the Sand Hills of Nebraska, trying to walk the mile and a half from their older sister’s home back to theirs, the girls, 8 and 4. Them managing to get lost, severely lost, following a ghost fire on the horizon that they think represents help. 4 days later, the searchers found the 4 year old walking. She had worn the soles off her new shoes. She and her sister had gotten separated when her older sister climbed a hill to see how much closer they were to that campfire they had been chasing. The younger tried to circle the hill to catch up with her sister. They never found each other again. They found her sister an additional 4 days later. The 8 year old had walked 75 miles in a week before dying of exposure.

Meh / PFFT Moments:
The idea that this largely forgotten race wasn’t for individual glory but the immortality of the Old West is over romantic and silly. Even if you go with the idea that it was for civic pride, how many of us have ever heard of Chadron, Nebraska. The immortality of the Old West is more tied up in the icons of the age. Even Buffalo Bill Cody isn’t as central to that mythos today as he was for previous generations.

Wisdom:
Left to wonder if all the death being represented in the book is meant to show that the West was still untamed or that these types of thing weren’t going to happen in the world aborning. This plays against the dichotomy of the views of the Chicago World’s Fair and Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show.

The horror stories of the West aren’t told as often as the hero tales. But the frontier, by its nature, wasn’t forgiving, and was no place for small children. But families who needed to stay together and were trying to build a life, what choice did they have.

“Let them(women) do any kind of work that they see fit, and if they do it as well as men, give them the same pay.” -Buffalo Bill Cody

Before 1893, Buffalo Bill Cody suggested a national game preserve to save the buffalo. “The fate of the buffalo, which a few years ago roamed the plains in herds of tens of thousands, is to be the fate of all other game unless something is done to check the wholesale destruction of wild animals.” In January of that year, he attempted to get the US Interior Department to go along with him on that idea. It was rejected.

Why isn’t there a screenplay?
Maybe there should be. There’s a line describing the three frontrunners as they cross into Iowa, “...the old man, the rattlesnake, and the outlaw bunched up like ornery cattle unable to shake one another.” The Old Man, The Rattlesnake, and The Outlaw would make a great movie title.

Missed Opportunity:
There should be a long distance bike race between Chadron, Nebraska and Chicago every year, a Tour de France type event, call it the Great Cowboy Race, even.

In this era of the dying circus, I wonder if a Wild West touring show would be able to support itself?
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Last Page Sound:
The race seems to end with a whimper instead of a bang. Then, the final disposition of the cowboys who rode is played out. And then the Postscript leaves the reader with a hard emotion of sadness.

Author Assessment:
Depends.

Editorial Assessment:
Overly rigid contextually. What should have been scattered throughout the narrative is focused in the chapters/sections. As an example, the protests against the treatment of the horses was like, pardon the pun, beating a dead horse as the same point was hammered home over and over and over again. More time was spent on the protests against the treatment of horses, which is an important part of the story, than was spent on who the cowboys were. More time was spent on Buffalo Bill and who he was than on who the racers were. More time was spent on the Chicago’s World Fair and the city of Chadron, Nebraska than on the people genuinely involved in the race. Editing could have probably cut this from its 260 pages to under 160, easily. Some of this imbalance could be addressed in the actual coverage of the race, we’ll see. It didn’t.

Wasted so, so much time on the treading, retreading, and re-retreading the Humane Society angle that it ate up the story and acted as a distraction. Despite the focus on that angle, the contradictions to it where we saw that the horses were, in large part, in much better shape than the cowboys is significant.

Knee Jerk Reaction:
it’s alright

Disposition of Book:
Irving Public Library
South Campus
Irving, TX

Dewey Decimal System:
798.40978
SER

Would recommend to:
genre fans
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… (mehr)
½
 
Gekennzeichnet
texascheeseman | Jun 2, 2017 |
Great story of the last of the veterans and not so veteran.
½
 
Gekennzeichnet
wmnch2fam | Jan 13, 2014 |

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