by Gerard Russell ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 21, 2014
A pertinent work of history and journalism. As armies again march in the Middle East, these communities are at new risk.
Rare glimpses inside isolated pockets of ancient settlements in the Middle East, revealing fragile yet tenacious religions.
During his years in the British foreign service in Iraq, Iran and Lebanon over the course of the 2000s, peripatetic British diplomat Russell visited many of these remote peoples, studying their vibrant religions—e.g., the Ezidis of northern Iraq, who experience persecution to this day. A speaker of Arabic and Farsi, he was especially attuned to the nuances of history and sensitive to the particular vulnerabilities of each group. Though not a scholar, he makes erudite assertions regarding these “intellectual cousins in unexpected places,” who share with us Indo-European roots and have been preserved due to their remoteness or usefulness to the reigning political forces. Some of the religions are ancient offshoots of the three Abrahamic religions (“people of the book”) and have retained a more “pure” form. The Mandaeans of Babylonian Iraq claim descent from the son of Adam, Seth, and revere John the Baptist as the greatest prophet. The Samaritans of the West Bank, Palestine, are cherished as a lost tribe of Israel that has been “keeping to the letter” of ancient traditions that the Jews abandoned—e.g., revering Mount Gerizim as God’s sacred mountain. The descendants of those first converts by Mark the evangelist in Egypt in the first century are still thriving as Copts. The highly secretive Ezidis, though they speak the same language as the Kurds, Kurmanji, are not Kurds but share some tenets of Christianity and Islam and believe in reincarnation and the earthly manifestation of Melek Taoos, in the form of a peacock. Russell penetrates the secret workings of these religions tolerated throughout the ages by Christian or Islamic rulers, even pursuing his research to immigrant churches in Dearborn, Michigan.
A pertinent work of history and journalism. As armies again march in the Middle East, these communities are at new risk.Pub Date: Oct. 21, 2014
ISBN: 978-0465030569
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2014
Share your opinion of this book
by David Grann ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 18, 2017
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Awards & Accolades
Likes
19
Our Verdict
GET IT
Kirkus Reviews'
Best Books Of 2017
New York Times Bestseller
IndieBound Bestseller
National Book Award Finalist
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
Share your opinion of this book
More by David Grann
BOOK REVIEW
by David Grann
BOOK REVIEW
by David Grann
BOOK REVIEW
by David Grann
More About This Book
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Share your opinion of this book
More by Elie Wiesel
BOOK REVIEW
by Elie Wiesel ; edited by Alan Rosen
BOOK REVIEW
by Elie Wiesel ; illustrated by Mark Podwal
BOOK REVIEW
by Elie Wiesel ; translated by Marion Wiesel
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Hey there, book lover.
We’re glad you found a book that interests you!
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Don’t fret. We’ll find you.