Lawrence Goldstone

Goldstone has written an unflinching look at race and justice in post-Civil War America. On Easter Sunday in 1873, a group of white supremacists surrounded a church in the central Louisiana town of Colfax and set it on fire with over a hundred formerly enslaved men inside. And when the men came out and threw down their weapons in surrender, they were slaughtered where they stood. Goldman clearly outlines the political, social, and racial tensions that led to the massacre and the significance show more of the Supreme Court decision that allowed the men responsible for the massacre to go without punishment or penalty. The end of Radical Reconstruction in the South and the oppressive Jim Crow era of discrimination and violence that followed are depicted by the author in depth while he relates the Colfax massacre to the national chaos left in its wake. The end matter includes a glossary, bibliography, source notes, index, and illustration and photograph credits. show less

There's a blurb on the back of this book from Kirkus Reviews that says Used and Rare is "A sort of Year in Provence for book lovers." This is the perfect description for this book, except it was funnier; I laughed out loud in several places.

Used and Rare chronicles the journey of the Goldstones into book collecting, starting with an innocent search for a used copy of War and Peace suitable for a gift. This is how lifelong, obsessive passions begin. In fact it occurred to me as I read this show more that I have reason to be thankful that MT does not share my passionate love of books because if he did, we'd be the Goldstones and I shudder to think of the swath of destruction the two of us having a shared passion would wreck on our finances.

Having started reading this last night before bed (and making MT stay awake long enough so I could read parts of it aloud to him), I blew off everything I had to do today so that I could sit down and finish it. It's well written, it's funny, it's interesting and surprisingly it has what could sort of be called a plot, in that there's a journey these two take through book collecting and by the end of the book they come out the other other side with realisations made and lessons learned. In fact, the way the book ended was just the cherry on top of a perfectly lovely read.

This book isn't necessarily going to appeal to people who love to read, but people who love to own books and take great pleasure in being physically surrounded by the works of authors who have educated, entertained and changed them for better or worse? I think those people would love this book and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it. show less

Reformation-era physician and theologian Michael Servetus is remembered today for two things: he was the first anatomist to accurately describe the circulation of the blood through the heart, and he died a heretic's brutal death at the stake in John Calvin's Geneva. Lawrence and Nancy Goldstone tell the story of Servetus's life and thought in Out of the Flames., with a special emphasis on the fate of Servetus' written works, many of which moldered in obscurity for years.

Calvin (aka "the show more Ayatollah of Geneva") held a personal grudge against Servetus because the scholar had written a scathing line-by-line critique of Calvin's magnum opus, The Institutes of the Christian Religion. The reformer was determined that his rival's work would not outlive him. After an unjust trial, Calvin had Servetus burned at the stake along with his books, and ordered all remaining copies destroyed. Today, only three copies of his Christianismi Restitutio, the book in which Servetus famously rejected the doctrine of the Trinity and described the circulation of the heart, are known to have survived.

Although he was a martyr, the Goldstones do not portray Servetus as a saint. He was brilliant, but also arrogant and in some ways, foolish. He courted his own death by insisting on stopping by Geneva on his way to exile in Italy.

The Goldstones did a lot of research, and it seems they didn't want to leave a single bit of it out. The book gets confusing and a little ponderous as they tell the back stories of many figures through the ages, some of whom were only tangentially related to Servetus. Nonetheless, this is a good introduction to the life and work of a man who held fast to his convictions in the face of murderous opposition. show less

Unpunished Murder: Massacre at Colfax and the Quest for Justice is the history of shamefully forgotten crime against humanity that led to an equally shameful Supreme Court decision that should be as vilified as Dred Scott and Plessy vs. Ferguson. On Easter Sunday in 1873 over a hundred unarmed African-Americans were slaughtered by white supremacists determined to end Reconstruction and seize political power. Shamefully, to this day, Colfax, Mississipi has a memorial honoring the murderers.

In show more the book, Lawrence Goldstone sets the stage from the end of the Civil War, the disgraceful Andrew Johnson presidency, and the Republicans’ rapid retreat from civil rights. There was rampant corruption and flagrant election cheating. President Grant made poor judicial appointments, seeking nonentities with few public positions in an effort to avoid conflict. White supremacists used violence and intimidation to regain power in the South. In Colfax, a black community with black elected leadership, whites came from all over to march into town and seize power. Outnumbered and out-armed, the black citizens surrendered and then were slaughtered. 3 whites were killed, at least two by friendly fire and to this day monuments stand to honor them, misnaming this massacre a riot.

Seeking justice was difficult and let to an egregious Supreme Court decision that gave the stamp of approval to vigilantism, the Klan, and racist intimidation and lynchings for years to come and eviscerating the civil rights protections in the 14th, 15th, and 16th Amendments. Incidentally, this is the same court that declared corporations were people, too, my friends.

I think Unpunished Murder tells an important story. It tackles the false narrative of Reconstruction as a corrupt failure and shows the true story that Reconstruction was abandoned to pander to white supremacy. It reveals the vicious racism and corruption that led to our government’s abject failure to meet its obligation to African Americans, it’s desertion in the face of white supremacy abandoning blacks to murder and oppression.

I also think it suffers from a failing all too common with history books for young people. For some reason, there’s this idea that shorter is better, so writers pack too many facts into too little narrative. Narrative matters and is an important part of making a story interesting and gives the story flow. History should be about the story, and here the story part is sacrificed to need to pack as many facts per page as possible. This is an interesting and important story and it’s not that I think most of the facts should have been left out. I just think they needed more connective tissue. Let the book be longer, it will be more interesting.

I can’t blame the author, though. Goldstone is writing to the expectations of teachers and publishers, the more facts per inch kind of writing that makes students think history is dull rather than exciting. In reality, history is full of stories of love, betrayal, good, evil, battles won and lost, and is every bit as exciting as anything on Game of Thrones, but these stories need the flesh of narrative to hold the bones of fact together.

Unpunished Murder will be released on August 28th. I received an ARC from the publisher through a Shelf Awareness drawing.

Unpunished Murder at Scholastic Books
Lawrence Goldstone author site

★★★
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