A character-rich historical biography that will have special appeal to young students of history.
A readable narrative of the legendary Egyptian queen that combines scholarship with novelistic detail and character depth.
First published in Italy in 2018, this popular history captures the essence of one of the most iconic figures in world history, a “stunning-looking, intelligent, and elegant woman with a deep gaze, and oozing sensuality.” Italian scholar, paleontologist, and journalist Angela focuses his inquiry on a key question, one that Cleopatra scholars have explored for centuries: “How did a delicate, lone woman, in an ancient world dominated by men, lead the kingdom of Egypt to its greatest expansion ever and become one of history’s brightest stars?” The author devotes the first 100 pages of his lengthy study building up to the assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 B.C.E., showing how the watershed event affected Cleopatra’s own vulnerable standing in the geopolitical realm. She took protection under Rome to stabilize her position of power in relation to her ambitious brothers and ensure Egypt’s autonomy. Upon Caesar’s death, however, she had to cultivate good standing with the new leadership. Using her singular combination of beauty, confidence, intelligence, and cunning, she was able to seduce Mark Antony, a process that Angela re-creates with fairly over-the-top description. Notwithstanding the author’s lapses into overheated language (“we can picture the queen on her bed, her curves rising with every breath, as she gazes at Antony confidently, intensely, invitingly, her full lips half open”), he effectively draws on previous scholarship, wading through legend and myth to get at the truth of what actually occurred. Angela engages readers with rhetorical questions and emphasizes that Cleopatra was a thoroughly modern woman, instrumental in paving the way for the Roman Empire under the ruthless Octavian. “Cleopatra is not only an alluring woman and a queen very capable of managing power,” he writes, “but also an incredible historical catalyst.”
A character-rich historical biography that will have special appeal to young students of history.Pub Date: March 23, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-298421-0
Page Count: 448
Publisher: HarperVia
Review Posted Online: Jan. 15, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2021
A top-notch political memoir and serious exercise in practical politics for every reader.
In the first volume of his presidential memoir, Obama recounts the hard path to the White House.
In this long, often surprisingly candid narrative, Obama depicts a callow youth spent playing basketball and “getting loaded,” his early reading of difficult authors serving as a way to impress coed classmates. (“As a strategy for picking up girls, my pseudo-intellectualism proved mostly worthless,” he admits.) Yet seriousness did come to him in time and, with it, the conviction that America could live up to its stated aspirations. His early political role as an Illinois state senator, itself an unlikely victory, was not big enough to contain Obama’s early ambition, nor was his term as U.S. Senator. Only the presidency would do, a path he painstakingly carved out, vote by vote and speech by careful speech. As he writes, “By nature I’m a deliberate speaker, which, by the standards of presidential candidates, helped keep my gaffe quotient relatively low.” The author speaks freely about the many obstacles of the race—not just the question of race and racism itself, but also the rise, with “potent disruptor” Sarah Palin, of a know-nothingism that would manifest itself in an obdurate, ideologically driven Republican legislature. Not to mention the meddlings of Donald Trump, who turns up in this volume for his idiotic “birther” campaign while simultaneously fishing for a contract to build “a beautiful ballroom” on the White House lawn. A born moderate, Obama allows that he might not have been ideological enough in the face of Mitch McConnell, whose primary concern was then “clawing [his] way back to power.” Indeed, one of the most compelling aspects of the book, as smoothly written as his previous books, is Obama’s cleareyed scene-setting for how the political landscape would become so fractured—surely a topic he’ll expand on in the next volume.
A top-notch political memoir and serious exercise in practical politics for every reader.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5247-6316-9
Page Count: 768
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 15, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
IN THE NEWS
IN THE NEWS
An essential account of a chaotic administration that, Woodward makes painfully clear, is incapable of governing.
That thing in the air that is deadlier than even your “strenuous flus”? Trump knew—and did nothing about it.
The big news from veteran reporter Woodward’s follow-up to Fear has been widely reported: Trump was fully aware at the beginning of 2020 that a pandemic loomed and chose to downplay it, causing an untold number of deaths and crippling the economy. His excuse that he didn’t want to cause a panic doesn’t fly given that he trades in fear and division. The underlying news, however, is that Trump participated in this book, unlike in the first, convinced by Lindsey Graham that Woodward would give him a fair shake. Seventeen interviews with the sitting president inform this book, as well as extensive digging that yields not so much news as confirmation: Trump has survived his ineptitude because the majority of Congressional Republicans go along with the madness because they “had made a political survival decision” to do so—and surrendered their party to him. The narrative often requires reading between the lines. Graham, though a byword for toadyism, often reins Trump in; Jared Kushner emerges as the real power in the West Wing, “highly competent but often shockingly misguided in his assessments”; Trump admires tyrants, longs for their unbridled power, resents the law and those who enforce it, and is quick to betray even his closest advisers; and, of course, Trump is beholden to Putin. Trump occasionally emerges as modestly self-aware, but throughout the narrative, he is in a rage. Though he participated, he said that he suspected this to be “a lousy book.” It’s not—though readers may wish Woodward had aired some of this information earlier, when more could have been done to stem the pandemic. When promoting Fear, the author was asked for his assessment of Trump. His reply: “Let’s hope to God we don’t have a crisis.” Multiple crises later, Woodward concludes, as many observers have, “Trump is the wrong man for the job.”
An essential account of a chaotic administration that, Woodward makes painfully clear, is incapable of governing.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-982131-73-9
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 18, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2020
IN THE NEWS
IN THE NEWS
SEEN & HEARD
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