Woefully lacking in evidence and full of allusion, inference, and supposition, Collins’s study will satisfy only the most...
A bold and imaginative attempt to understand the destruction of the legendary city of Atlantis, the creation of Mesoamerican civilization, and the end of the last Ice Age.
Collins (Gods of Eden, not reviewed) discusses the truth behind the Atlantis myth, first described in Plato’s Timaeus and Critias. The author disputes the standard view that Plato created the tale of Atlantis as a parable on divine wrath for decadent civilizations and argues instead that the philosopher was transcribing an essentially factual account. Collins believes that Atlantis did, in fact, exist, that its remnants can be found in the Caribbean islands of Cuba, Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, and the Bahamas, and that it had trading ties as far away as Egypt (where indigenous American goods such as cocaine and tobacco have been found in ancient mummies). He speculates that Atlantis was destroyed by a comet that struck the island and set off a chain reaction of floods and earthquakes, and that this event not only became the source of the flood myths so prevalent in ancient cultures, but also caused the last Ice Age to come to an end. Refugees from Atlantis traveled throughout the Americas, serving as a ruling elite wherever they went until they were eventually assimilated into the local cultures. Legends of the destructive cataclysm and the lost empire traveled back to the Old World via a triangular trade between the Phoenicians (and later the Carthaginians), the Olmec of Mexico, and the Chavin of Peru. The author considers many similar creation myths from Europe, Africa, and the Americas, and makes a concerted effort to tie up their loose ends—with varying degrees of success.
Woefully lacking in evidence and full of allusion, inference, and supposition, Collins’s study will satisfy only the most devoted Atlantophiles. (16 pp. b&w photos)Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-7867-0810-7
Page Count: 448
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2000
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
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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