Master historian Strauss (History and Classics/Cornell Univ.; Masters of Command: Hannibal, Alexander, Caesar and the Genius of Leadership, 2012, etc.) zeroes in on the few years surrounding Julius Caesar’s assassination and delves into the strengths of the characters involved.
The author traces five of the best sources: Nicolaus of Damascus, Plutarch, Suetonius, Cassius Dio and Appian. Everyone knows what happened on the ides of March, but Strauss goes deeper in his investigation of how Caesar had ill omens and decided not to attend the senate meeting he had called. It was Decimus, longtime supporter, friend and fellow diner the night before, who literally led Caesar by the hand into the senate. Of the conspirators, Decimus was the most important and the most vilified. Cassius and Brutus completed the leadership of the plot. They were supporters of Pompey and the Republic against Caesar during the recent civil war, and each had his own ambition. Brutus “wanted to kill Caesar without launching a revolution or disturbing the peace—an impossible ambition.” The author shows us a side of Caesar beyond the military genius, a man despised by Cato, Cicero and all who longed for the Republic. Ostensibly a non-noble populist who pushed for change and championed the poor, he also was wise enough to keep his army and the citizens loyal with land grants and money. Even the great Caesar was capable of making mistakes, and Strauss points to three that sealed his fate: He disrespected the senate, flirted with monarchy and dispensed with the people’s tribunes. Caesar, now a perpetual dictator, god, and a man dismissive of the senate and the people, was headed for a big fall. The author explains how Caesar’s funeral was even more dramatic than Shakespeare’s version—especially Mark Antony’s eulogy.
Once again, Strauss takes us deep into the psyche of ancient history in an exciting, twisted tale that is sure to please.Pub Date: March 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4516-6879-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Dec. 11, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
Categories: GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL HISTORY | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | HISTORICAL & MILITARY | ANCIENT | HISTORY
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
Categories: GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | PHILOSOPHY & RELIGION | PSYCHOLOGY | HISTORICAL & MILITARY
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
Categories: BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | HOLOCAUST | HISTORY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL HISTORY
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