Nearly unparalleled insight into the period and the man make this a story for everyone.
Everitt (The Rise of Athens: The Story of the World’s Greatest Civilization, 2016, etc.) shows us the genius of Alexander (356-323 B.C.E.) in a biography that reads as easily as a novel.
In order to provide a full picture of this fascinating figure, the author seamlessly weaves in comments from friends and foes alike, including Demosthenes and Aristotle. Alexander was driven to conquer the impossible, whether it was fording a river or driving his army to India’s “river ocean” to see the “world’s edge.” From the strong influence of his mother, Olympias, and father, Philip, who shifted the balance of power in the Eastern Mediterranean, he received a Greek education and the strength to take over the world. Philip was not cruel but certainly ruthless as he became leader of all Greece, exhibiting how self-government by the defeated could minimize expenses. After Philip’s murder (with lots of suspects), the task of invading Persia fell to Alexander. He inherited a large, disciplined army, a wealthy empire, and Philip’s military genius, allowing him to quell uprisings. He had no personal ambition but delighted in danger; he was audacious to the point of lunatic courage; he was devoted to his friends, respectful of enemies. Alexander’s masterful engineers, artillery, and siege engines, along with his incredible luck, helped as he defeated the Persians time and again. He won the day against the Persians at the Granicus, which made him the leader of Asia Minor. Darius III escaped not once but twice, leading Alexander further into unknown territory. Moving into India, Alexander respected the different cultures and rejected racism, but he alternated chivalry with ferocity. Wartime massacres and total destruction of Thebes, Tyre, and Persepolis were cases of cruel necessity rather than gratuitous cruelty. Celebrations could turn into drunken quarrels and turned his men’s respect into fear as they longed for home. Everitt has a wealth of anecdotes and two millennia of histories to work with, and he delivers and interprets them flawlessly.
Nearly unparalleled insight into the period and the man make this a story for everyone.Pub Date: Aug. 27, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-425-28652-4
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 7, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2019
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
An engrossing, intense, and highly descriptive narrative chronicling the ghastly conditions three pregnant women suffered...
The incredible true story of three Jewish women who survived the Holocaust.
Priska, Rachel, and Anka were married Jewish women in their early 20s when the Nazis took control of Europe. Like millions of other Jews, they were forced to give up their normal lives, all of their belongings, and their homes. Shuttled into ghettos and then off to one of the most notorious camps, Auschwitz II-Birkenau, they suffered through the Nazis’ increasing atrocities. But these three women all held a secret: they were pregnant. They were moved from Auschwitz and ended up in Mauthausen, another notorious death camp. With facing the most horrible conditions imaginable, all three gave birth right before the Allies accepted Germany’s surrender. In this meticulously detailed account, Holden (Haatchi & Little B: The Inspiring True Story of One Boy and His Dog, 2014, etc.) compiles an enormous amount of information from interviews, letters, historical records, and personal visits to the sites where this story unfolded. The graphic history places readers in the moment and provides a sense of the enduring power of love that Priska, Rachel, and Anka had for their unborn children and for the husbands they so desperately hoped to see after the war. Even though it occurred more than 70 years ago, the story’s truth is so chillingly portrayed that it seems as if it could have happened recently. These three women and their infants survived in the face of death, and, Holden writes, “their babies went on to have babies of their own and create a second and then a third generation, all of whom continue to live their lives in defiance of Hitler’s plan to erase them from history and from memory.”
An engrossing, intense, and highly descriptive narrative chronicling the ghastly conditions three pregnant women suffered through at the hands of the Nazis.Pub Date: May 5, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-237025-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2015
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