An intriguing new twist to an old enigma.
Modern scientific engineering tackles the enduring mystery contained within the greatest monument ever built.
Egyptologist Brier (Daily Life of the Ancient Egyptians, 1999, etc.) joins French architect Houdin to offer a theory about how the Great Pyramid of the necropolis of Giza was really built. What, precisely, were the methods, lost for eons, that brilliant chief engineer Hemienu might have devised 4,500 years ago to construct the tomb of his Pharaoh, Khufu? In a brief review of pyramidology, this accessible text uncovers the work of the ancient pioneers of mortuary skills, of the artists and artisans, engineers, bureaucrats and the multitude of laborers housed in the Lost City near the worksite who carved history in stone those long millennia ago. Various theories have been posited regarding the building of Khufu’s massive portal to eternity, a place he may never have occupied. Some have supposed the use of counterweights to haul and lift the hewn blocks of stone. Others posited a huge ramp, possibly a mile long, which would have required more mass than the pyramid itself. In this account, technology assists archeology. With the aid of georadar and microgravimetry, the monument, with its internal passages and chambers, can be built again on a computer monitor using sophisticated 3-D computer modeling. According to Brier, who wrote the text, and Houdin, who reverse-engineered at the computer, the best way to construct Khufu’s big memorial was with a ramp that spiraled inside the structure as it rose to the capstone over the years. It’s a plausible theory, well-illustrated, and makes a useful addition to the always seductive study of pyramids.
An intriguing new twist to an old enigma.Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-06-165552-4
Page Count: 218
Publisher: Smithsonian/Collins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2008
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
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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