A well-informed but too-terse portrait of Paris’ colorful history.
A British historian summarizes the history of one of the world’s great cities.
In the latest installment of the publisher’s Short History series, prolific author Black offers a quick rundown of the major political and cultural events that have made Paris one of the most visited and romanticized cities. He covers a lot of ground, from the city’s earliest days, when Caesar’s deputy defeated the Parisii in 52 B.C. and put the city under Roman control; to medieval times, when Charlemagne was crowned in 768 but “spent most of his life on campaign, notably against the Saxons”; to the Wars of Religion in the 16th century, the building of Versailles in the 17th, the “great flourishing of creativity” by authors and musicians in the 1920s, and the massive projects—high-speed train service, the Louvre’s pyramid entrance—begun under François Mitterrand in the late 20th century. Black’s volume, while clearly erudite, is pretty much a list of major historical events, construction projects, and so on, with little or no elaboration. The one exception is the more in-depth chapter on the French Revolution. Readers seeking an executive summary of Parisian history—punctuated by wonderful old maps and inserts on lighter topics, including the Montgolfier brothers’ pioneering flight in a hot-air balloon and the growth of fast-food chains that showed “not all Parisians are unwilling to spend their money on ultra-processed burgers and fried chicken”—may find it useful and entertaining. The author also offers some memorable oddities, such as the story of Saint Denis, first bishop of Paris. Around 250 A.D., “during the persecution of Christians,” Emperor Decius “allegedly” had him beheaded at Montmartre: “It was said that he picked up his decapitated head and walked for some distance, preaching as he went.”
A well-informed but too-terse portrait of Paris’ colorful history.Pub Date: May 14, 2024
ISBN: 9780500027080
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Thames & Hudson
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2024
HISTORY | ANCIENT | MODERN | WORLD | GENERAL HISTORY
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 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
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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