Sure to be the most enduring treatment of this major historical event for some time.
A thorough, high-quality work on Emperor Nero and the fire that destroyed Rome in 64 C.E.
A noted biographer of such ancient figures as Caligula and Livia, Barrett focuses on one of the turning points in the history of the Eternal City, one that proved a “human tragedy” of panic, mayhem, horror, death, and loss. Drawing on the latest archaeological discoveries, writing with practiced skepticism, challenging the accounts of ancient chroniclers, and showing his deep learning, the author sorts out and dismisses many of the myths surrounding the fire, which raged for nine days and destroyed two-thirds of the city. Nero didn’t fiddle while the city burned, and no one, including the suspected, martyred Christians, set the fire, whose precise origins remain undetermined. Yet for all that didn’t happen, the conflagration did effectively destroy the Roman economy and Nero’s reputation (although Barrett succeeds in saving what can be saved of the emperor’s name) and led to his leadership’s collapse and the end of the imperial line that began with Julius Caesar. The city’s reconstruction, to which the author devotes much attention, led to architectural innovations like octagonal structures, domes, and the use of concrete vaulting. While context-setting is necessary, there’s excess information about the history of fires, and a couple of the book’s chapters, especially those on the archaeological evidence of the fire’s extent and the city’s rebuilding, may be a test for general readers—but will interest students of the period. On the whole, the book is briskly written in a colloquial voice and succeeds in bringing burning Rome vividly alive. Barrett ends with a distinctive survey of the places of Nero and the fire in a variety of artistic disciplines, including literature, film, and opera. An unusual number of maps and photos add greatly to the reading experience.
Sure to be the most enduring treatment of this major historical event for some time.Pub Date: Nov. 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-691-17231-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Princeton Univ.
Review Posted Online: July 22, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2020
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
Essential reading for any Twain buff and student of American literature.
A decidedly warts-and-all portrait of the man many consider to be America’s greatest writer.
It makes sense that distinguished biographer Chernow (Washington: A Life and Alexander Hamilton) has followed up his life of Ulysses S. Grant with one of Mark Twain: Twain, after all, pulled Grant out of near bankruptcy by publishing the ex-president’s Civil War memoir under extremely favorable royalty terms. The act reflected Twain’s inborn generosity and his near pathological fear of poverty, the prime mover for the constant activity that characterized the author’s life. As Chernow writes, Twain was “a protean figure who played the role of printer, pilot, miner, journalist, novelist, platform artist, toastmaster, publisher, art patron, pundit, polemicist, inventor, crusader, investor, and maverick.” He was also slippery: Twain left his beloved Mississippi River for the Nevada gold fields as a deserter from the Confederate militia, moved farther west to California to avoid being jailed for feuding, took up his pseudonym to stay a step ahead of anyone looking for Samuel Clemens, especially creditors. Twain’s flaws were many in his own day. Problematic in our own time is a casual racism that faded as he grew older (charting that “evolution in matters of racial tolerance” is one of the great strengths of Chernow’s book). Harder to explain away is Twain’s well-known but discomfiting attraction to adolescent and even preadolescent girls, recruiting “angel-fish” to keep him company and angrily declaring when asked, “It isn’t the public’s affair.” While Twain emerges from Chernow’s pages as the masterful—if sometimes wrathful and vengeful—writer that he is now widely recognized to be, he had other complexities, among them a certain gullibility as a businessman that kept that much-feared poverty often close to his door, as well as an overarchingly gloomy view of the human condition that seemed incongruous with his reputation, then and now, as a humanist.
Essential reading for any Twain buff and student of American literature.Pub Date: May 13, 2025
ISBN: 9780525561729
Page Count: 1200
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
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