A stimulating history of “how the Roman transformation of Gaul laid the foundations of modern Europe.”
Omrani (Classics/Westminster School, England; Asia Overland: Tales of Travel on the Trans-Siberian & Silk Road, 2010, etc.) displays the facility of a poet, waxing eloquent on the beauty of sites where the Roman influence in Gaul forcefully asserted itself. This book is as much a travelogue as it is a wonderfully simplified lesson on Julius Caesar and his successors. The author effectively shows the full effects of the Roman occupation. The warlike, feuding Gauls had a culture of raiding, so they needed to expand further afield. They attacked Rome in 390 B.C.E., the only sack until Alaric arrived in 410 C.E. Caesar had no intention of expanding the Roman Empire; he was in search of military glory, amassing money and access to more manpower for his army. Initially, the Romans were not at all engaged in nation-building. Thousands of Gauls were killed or enslaved, the land devastated, and their culture obliterated—at least what we know of their culture since we only have Caesar’s reports to go on. With their lands divided, the Gallic peoples turned to defining themselves, taking the best of Rome as needed. As the author notes, while the foundations of the French state are to be found in Clovis, the origins of the French people lie before Caesar with the Gauls. Omrani takes us to Roman ruins in many French cities, most of which have public structures, statues, and inscriptions illustrating the Romanitas (Roman-ness) displayed by the Gallic elites to flaunt their wealth and status. After such a thrilling adventure, the author may leave readers wanting more. His electric excitement is consistently contagious as he glories in the unique history of France as she connects to her Roman past.
A book for all lovers of ancient history, with something to learn or love on nearly every page.Pub Date: Dec. 5, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-68177-566-1
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Pegasus
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2017
Categories: GENERAL HISTORY | ANCIENT | WORLD | HISTORY
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For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
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Rootin’-tootin’ history of the dry-gulchers, horn-swogglers, and outright killers who populated the Wild West’s wildest city in the late 19th century.
The stories of Wyatt Earp and company, the shootout at the O.K. Corral, and Geronimo and the Apache Wars are all well known. Clavin, who has written books on Dodge City and Wild Bill Hickok, delivers a solid narrative that usefully links significant events—making allies of white enemies, for instance, in facing down the Apache threat, rustling from Mexico, and other ethnically charged circumstances. The author is a touch revisionist, in the modern fashion, in noting that the Earps and Clantons weren’t as bloodthirsty as popular culture has made them out to be. For example, Wyatt and Bat Masterson “took the ‘peace’ in peace officer literally and knew that the way to tame the notorious town was not to outkill the bad guys but to intimidate them, sometimes with the help of a gun barrel to the skull.” Indeed, while some of the Clantons and some of the Earps died violently, most—Wyatt, Bat, Doc Holliday—died of cancer and other ailments, if only a few of old age. Clavin complicates the story by reminding readers that the Earps weren’t really the law in Tombstone and sometimes fell on the other side of the line and that the ordinary citizens of Tombstone and other famed Western venues valued order and peace and weren’t particularly keen on gunfighters and their mischief. Still, updating the old notion that the Earp myth is the American Iliad, the author is at his best when he delineates those fraught spasms of violence. “It is never a good sign for law-abiding citizens,” he writes at one high point, “to see Johnny Ringo rush into town, both him and his horse all in a lather.” Indeed not, even if Ringo wound up killing himself and law-abiding Tombstone faded into obscurity when the silver played out.
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21458-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
Categories: GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL HISTORY | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | HISTORICAL & MILITARY | UNITED STATES | HISTORY
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