by Barnaby Rogerson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 15, 2007
The result, centuries later, is sectarian division that shows no signs whatever of healing—and that figures heavily in the...
A well-crafted glimpse into the origins and early years of Islam, even then torn by dissension and violence.
Imagine that the Reformation and Counterreformation had been waged soon after Christ died, and the hard feelings between Shiite and Sunni Muslims become more comprehensible. Rogerson (The Prophet Muhammad, not reviewed), a writer with experience covering the Arab world, offers a lucid explanation of the Sunni-Shia split, which took fullest shape with the assassination of the fourth caliph, Muhammad’s nephew Ali, in 660—a murder committed even though the revered prophet had declared Ali to be the gate into “the town of knowledge” that he himself symbolized. Rogerson adds most interesting twists to this well known tale by casting it in the context of the long-standing rivalry between the two Arabian towns of Mecca and Medina, which, he writes, represent two halves of the Qur’an with “two quite different tones,” the verses from Mecca addressed to the whole of humankind and those from Medina addressed to the political and physical realities of Arabia at the time of Islam’s birth. This rivalry ocassionally blossomed into war, and it seems to have been waged well into the caliphates that followed Muhammad’s death; in some ways, the author suggests, the rivalry persists. The four caliphs of that first century of Islam had different agendas and interests, but they expanded the new religion’s sphere to embrace an unprecedented empire; as happens with power politics, they also initiated and suffered intrigues that betrayed Islam’s peaceful promise, culminating in the murders of Muhammad’s immediate descendants in what is now Iraq, when, in Rogerson’s memorable phrase, “seventy heads had been rolled out from bloodied leather sacks on to the palace floor of the governor of Kufa.”
The result, centuries later, is sectarian division that shows no signs whatever of healing—and that figures heavily in the world news. Rogerson capably explains its beginnings.Pub Date: Feb. 15, 2007
ISBN: 1-58567-896-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Overlook
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2006
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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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