An engrossing and visually splendid exploration of the artistic and cultural meaning of canes.
The humble walking stick is a medium for intricate art and ingenious engineering, according to this lavishly illustrated work.
Moss, a joint chairman of London’s Antique Walking Cane Society and an avid collector, surveys the history of walking sticks and canes—and their ubiquitous spinoff, the umbrella—and their multifarious guises and functions. Canes, he notes, were a practical necessity for navigating muddy, treacherous pre-modern streets, especially for 18th-century fashionistas wearing high heels and unwieldy wigs. They were also useful for fending off ruffians, whether as a club or as a disguised sword, spear, or gun. Jewel-encrusted scepters were status markers for noblemen, and simpler canes were understated testaments to the tastefulness of the self-made London dandy. Above all, they were art objects, whether gnarled carvings by folk craftsmen, sleek art deco confections, or props in a Fred Astaire dance routine. Moss illustrates all of this history with photos of items in his own collection, which make up the heart of the book. He showcases a bewildering variety of walking sticks and umbrellas: sword-canes, pistol canes, razor-blade canes, canes that squirt water to amuse children (or acid to repel assailants), canes that contain shaving kits, cameras, telescopes, matchboxes, ear trumpets, watches, nutmeg graters, musical instruments, or even surgical instruments for performing circumcisions. His photographs focus on the rich artistry of the handles, including porcelain ones painted with delicate landscapes; ivory and wood handles carved as animals and flowers; erotic carvings of supine maidens; historical busts; macabre carvings of deceased heads in various stages of decay and vermin infestation; and a whimsical carving of a man peering cross-eyed at a wasp on his nose.
This treatise presents its readers with a soup-to-nuts introduction to canes, covering everything from details of construction, materials, and patents to cultural conventions that governed their use. The hundreds of sumptuous full-color images do full justice to the items, and the text curates them well, examining them by genre and period. Moss’ lucid prose features evocative appreciations of both the canes’ aesthetics—“The sculptor has expertly carved the woman’s sinuous hair and body to follow the curve of the handle,” he writes of a handle featuring mermaids, “while her counterpart lies face up on the top of the handle, her exquisitely detailed tail wrapped around the swell”—and their symbolism, noting, for example, that the iconic puppet character Punch’s appeal lies in the fact that he’s “a strange combination of the demon and the buffoon.” Over the course of the book, his shrewd, wide-ranging historical analysis situates canes in their larger social context, as well: “Dandyism can be seen as a stand against the levelling of democratic values, often including a nostalgic loyalty to pre-industrial values, such as the ideals of ‘the perfect gentleman’ or ‘the autonomous aristocrat.’ ” Connoisseurs and casual readers with a liking for good-looking fashion accessories will find a great deal of interesting lore and imagery here.
An engrossing and visually splendid exploration of the artistic and cultural meaning of canes.Pub Date: Oct. 10, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5381-4495-4
Page Count: 568
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Review Posted Online: Oct. 11, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
SEEN & HEARD
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