There is so much information—much of it useful but some superfluous—that this could easily be used as a textbook. Tracking...
Capponi (An Unlikely Prince: The Life and Times of Machiavelli, 2010, etc.), a descendant of one of Florence’s most prominent families, has the inside track on the beginnings of the Medici rule and their patronage of the great rebirth of art and architecture.
The author explains the politics of Italy, with its papal states, succession of popes, city-state squabbles, and different mercenaries. A good background in Italy’s history and geography is necessary for comprehension, but there is considerable difficulty keeping track of rulers, their sons, and those who usurp them—as well as deciphering their allegiances. Military leaders are just as confusing, as they frequently changed their ties with the wind (and purse), and Capponi alternates referring to characters by their first names, last names, or titles. In the early 15th century, there was considerable conflict among Milan, Venice, and Florence. Each city in Northern Italy was affected, either by promises of support, marriages, or threats of side wars with or against Genoa, Lucca, Pisa, and any other city along the supply routes. The author thoroughly enlightens readers regarding the inner workings of the armies and of Florence’s politics. The defeat of the papal army and the Duke of Milan at the Battle of Anghiari gave the area time to rebuild. Then came the rise of the Medici, who financed the transformation of art and helped begin the Renaissance. The book lacks as art history—there are only a few mentions of artists and short chapter-heading pieces about da Vinci’s lost painting of the Battle of Anghiari—but as military history, it shines.
There is so much information—much of it useful but some superfluous—that this could easily be used as a textbook. Tracking the characters, their treachery, and the many battles will tax many general readers.Pub Date: Nov. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-61219-460-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Melville House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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