A bright, comprehensive horticultural celebration written with a fine eye for detail.
Scrupulous history of American gardens and the imaginative creators who made them possible.
Los Angeles–based garden designer and environmental writer Graham shares a wealth of knowledge on the genesis and development of America’s most striking landscapes. Each a “miniature Utopia,” these leafy environs are a reflection of their respective architects. The author ardently describes the first garden creations of the 1600s, then moves on to the Arts & Crafts romantic naturalism movement in the mid-19th century and Martha Stewart’s unique brand of house-and-garden style, which is interwoven with business savvy and “controlled enthusiasm.” Graham’s visit to the panoramic “founding garden” of Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, derived from British poet Alexander Pope’s “cutting-edge” landscaping approach, provides an intimate history of the third president’s life and boundless passion as a dedicated architecture and flora aficionado. The planned landscaping influence of “aesthetic giant” Andrew Jackson Downing paved the way for the blossoming genius of Frederick Law Olmsted, who, in collaboration with architect Calvert Vaux, brought “country to the city” in the redesign of New York’s Prospect Park and Central Park and Boston’s Emerald Necklace, among others. Graham points to the greening of New York’s Chelsea and West Village neighborhoods, the installation of Manhattan’s unique aerial greenway, High Line Park, and Michelle Obama’s White House kitchen garden as examples of a modern “return to agriculture” movement. Accented by paintings, photographs and drawings, the author’s appealing commentary introduces a distinctive line of gardeners and foliage engineers whose work has become timeless.
A bright, comprehensive horticultural celebration written with a fine eye for detail.Pub Date: April 5, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-06-158342-1
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 29, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2011
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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