A pleasing mix of epic sweep and meticulous research.
A new history of an important global capital.
Robertson, a member of the Scottish Parliament, spent much of his pre-parliamentary career as a journalist in Vienna, and he clearly loves the city. Surprised to find that there was no comprehensive account of the city’s history, he decided to write one. In this book, he chronicles that history, from the city’s beginnings as a Roman frontier fort to the present. For centuries, the city was the key bulwark against Islamic expansion into Europe, and Robertson recounts the numerous battles and sieges. He notes that Vienna, always famous for its bakeries, invented the croissant to mark a victory over an invading army, with the shape representing the crescent on Muslim flags. Vienna has always been a magnet for cultural influences from all over Europe, and it gradually evolved into the powerful capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Robertson leads readers through the labyrinthine politics associated with the city and notes the many famous figures—Mozart, Freud, Hitler, Stalin, Mahler, Klimt—who lived there at one time or another. In the aftermath of World War I, the empire disintegrated, but Vienna remained a crucial pivot point for the region. A dark period began when the Nazis invaded in 1938—and were largely welcomed. After World War II, Vienna was occupied by the Soviets and the Allies, and it was a whirlpool of Cold War espionage for a decade. The Russians left in 1955 after the Austrian government declared permanent neutrality. Even now, Austria is not a part of NATO. Robertson does a good job of keeping the complicated narrative straight, although the book is decidedly top-down history. Some readers may view it as essentially a procession of aristocrats, grandees, and diplomats. Nonetheless, the author is knowledgeable and has many interesting insights.
A pleasing mix of epic sweep and meticulous research.Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-63936-195-3
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Pegasus
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2022
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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