Best appreciated by readers with some grounding in ancient history, but lively enough to engage newbies as well.
Scholarly but colorful account of the toxic fallout from the untimely demise of a continent-striding conqueror.
Alexander the Great dreamed of “a single world-state stretching from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean,” but died of a mysterious fever (possibly poisoned) on the eve of his campaign against the Arabs in 323 BCE. His inner circle of trusted military men were soon dividing the empire among them; Perdiccas, the senior officer to whom Alexander had passed his signet ring, hoped that he could maintain an equilibrium by giving grizzled veterans Craterus and Antipater control of Europe, while he oversaw Asia from Babylon, sidelining his main rival Ptolemy in Egypt (to which Ptolemy deftly hijacked Alexander’s legacy-imprinting corpse). Alas, writes Romm (Classics/Bard Coll.; Herodotus, 1998, etc.), “Alexander had…nurtured in his staff an endless appetite for command and conquest.” Allegiances changed rapidly, and the leaders’ fortunes depended largely on the erratic loyalty of Alexander’s soldiers, in particular the famed Silver Shields, who were capable of fighting a battle on one side, then abandoning their general to join the victor. To this volatile mix were added several strong-minded women: Alexander’s mother Olympias, scheming to marrying his sister Cleopatra to a general who could protect them, and his niece Adea, wife of his mentally deficient half brother Philip. As soon as word of Alexander’s death got out, Greek city-states led by Athens revolted, war-weary troops in Bactria (northern Afghanistan) mutinied and chaos threatened everywhere. The names can be as hard to keep straight as the marital and military maneuvers, but Romm paints a vivid portrait of ancient politics, which were highly personal and extremely deadly. The murders of Olympias, Cleopatra, Philip and Adea, as well as Alexander’s Bactrian widow and their son, put an end to Macedonia’s Argead dynasty and signaled the arrival of “a multipolar world marked by rivalry, shifting alliances, and long-running small-scale conflicts—in many ways, a world like our own.”
Best appreciated by readers with some grounding in ancient history, but lively enough to engage newbies as well.Pub Date: Oct. 12, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-307-27164-8
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2011
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
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.
Rootin’-tootin’ history of the dry-gulchers, horn-swogglers, and outright killers who populated the Wild West’s wildest city in the late 19th century.
The stories of Wyatt Earp and company, the shootout at the O.K. Corral, and Geronimo and the Apache Wars are all well known. Clavin, who has written books on Dodge City and Wild Bill Hickok, delivers a solid narrative that usefully links significant events—making allies of white enemies, for instance, in facing down the Apache threat, rustling from Mexico, and other ethnically charged circumstances. The author is a touch revisionist, in the modern fashion, in noting that the Earps and Clantons weren’t as bloodthirsty as popular culture has made them out to be. For example, Wyatt and Bat Masterson “took the ‘peace’ in peace officer literally and knew that the way to tame the notorious town was not to outkill the bad guys but to intimidate them, sometimes with the help of a gun barrel to the skull.” Indeed, while some of the Clantons and some of the Earps died violently, most—Wyatt, Bat, Doc Holliday—died of cancer and other ailments, if only a few of old age. Clavin complicates the story by reminding readers that the Earps weren’t really the law in Tombstone and sometimes fell on the other side of the line and that the ordinary citizens of Tombstone and other famed Western venues valued order and peace and weren’t particularly keen on gunfighters and their mischief. Still, updating the old notion that the Earp myth is the American Iliad, the author is at his best when he delineates those fraught spasms of violence. “It is never a good sign for law-abiding citizens,” he writes at one high point, “to see Johnny Ringo rush into town, both him and his horse all in a lather.” Indeed not, even if Ringo wound up killing himself and law-abiding Tombstone faded into obscurity when the silver played out.
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21458-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
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