by Anna Keay ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 24, 2016
A lively and probably definitive biography of an ill-fated Restoration notable.
Charles II sired 14 bastards but loved his first, James, most of all. Unfortunately, only legitimate children could inherit the throne.
More admiring than most historians, British Landmark Trust director Keay (The Magnificent Monarch: Charles II and the Ceremonies of Power, 2008), the former curatorial director of English Heritage, delivers an insightful biography of a Restoration noble who was on friendly terms with contemporary rulers (Charles II, Louis XIV, William of Orange, James II) but lacked their guile or—in the case of James—malevolence. Born the same year his grandfather, Charles I, was beheaded, he was 11 when his father regained the throne. A typical Restoration libertine during his youth, he matured during the 1670s, becoming commander of Britain’s army and a popular figure. The key event was the conversion of Charles’ brother James to Catholicism, an action as controversial as a presidential candidate today converting to Islam. Despite this, Charles wanted his brother to succeed him. Although not the leader, Monmouth’s participation in the failed campaign to deny James the throne infuriated his father, who exiled him. Charles’ sudden death galvanized anti-Catholics, who persuaded the reluctant Monmouth that Britons would rise up if he arrived to lead them. They didn’t, and the regular army crushed the 1685 rebellion. Monmouth was captured and executed, but James’ vicious, prolonged revenge on his followers helped turn the nation against him. Minor historical characters get dull biographies, not because they were boring but because major historians prefer to tackle major figures, leaving lesser figures to scholars. No academic, Keay writes well, so readers will have no trouble following the story of this “legendary rogue.”
A lively and probably definitive biography of an ill-fated Restoration notable.Pub Date: May 24, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-62040-934-3
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: March 21, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2016
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by David Grann ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 18, 2017
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
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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
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by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
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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