Presser’s detailed account provides a sense of authority to a story too bizarre to be anything but true.
A South Pacific tale of “tribalism, trauma, psychopathy, paranoia, and survival in the bleakest of conditions.”
After numerous books and films, the story of the 1789 mutiny on the British navy ship Bountyis fairly well known—the Hollywood version, at least. Fletcher Christian led a group to overthrow the tyrannical Capt. Bligh and then sail into the South Pacific sunset. However, according to this meticulously researched book, that was far from the end of the adventure. The mutiny was just the prologue, writes Presser, a travel writer who has visited more than 130 countries; the real story involves what happened to the mutineers later. Eventually, they reached the daunting Pitcairn Island, one of the most remote islands in the world. Leading a mixed bag of sailors, Tahitian men, and Tahitian women that the Englishmen had taken as partners, Fletcher pronounced the island perfect for a self-sustaining, peaceful, and democratic minisociety. Of course, all did not go as planned. Some of the ex-sailors wanted a Caribbean-style feudal system and treated the Tahitian men as slaves and the women as pieces of a rotating harem. Inevitably, there was an outbreak of violence, although after several cycles of murder and retribution, it burned itself out and a measure of peace was reestablished. Eighteen years after the initial landing, another ship chanced upon them. By that time, there was a growing population of offspring—so many that some eventually moved to another island. Presser’s extensive research included “hundreds of resources from old captains’ logs to newspaper clippings to the other tomes penned by writers who have similarly descended down into the darkness of Pitcairn. He also lived there for several months, and he found the people to be tough yet also gossipy and obsessive. Armchair adventurers will appreciate the author’s sharp and sympathetic eye, showing us the mechanics of a truly remote civilization.
Presser’s detailed account provides a sense of authority to a story too bizarre to be anything but true.Pub Date: March 8, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5417-5857-5
Page Count: 352
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2021
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
Gibbins combines historical knowledge with a sense of adventure, making this book a highly enjoyable package.
A popular novelist turns his hand to historical writing, focusing on what shipwrecks can tell us.
There’s something inherently romantic about shipwrecks: the mystery, the drama of disaster, the prospect of lost treasure. Gibbins, who’s found acclaim as an author of historical fiction, has long been fascinated with them, and his expertise in both archaeology and diving provides a tone of solid authority to his latest book. The author has personally dived on more than half the wrecks discussed in the book; for the other cases, he draws on historical records and accounts. “Wrecks offer special access to history at all…levels,” he writes. “Unlike many archaeological sites, a wreck represents a single event in which most of the objects were in use at that time and can often be closely dated. What might seem hazy in other evidence can be sharply defined, pointing the way to fresh insights.” Gibbins covers a wide variety of cases, including wrecks dating from classical times; a ship torpedoed during World War II; a Viking longship; a ship of Arab origin that foundered in Indonesian waters in the ninth century; the Mary Rose, the flagship of the navy of Henry VIII; and an Arctic exploring vessel, the Terror (for more on that ship, read Paul Watson’s Ice Ghost). Underwater excavation often produces valuable artifacts, but Gibbins is equally interested in the material that reveals the society of the time. He does an excellent job of placing each wreck within a broader context, as well as examining the human elements of the story. The result is a book that will appeal to readers with an interest in maritime history and who would enjoy a different, and enlightening, perspective.
Gibbins combines historical knowledge with a sense of adventure, making this book a highly enjoyable package.Pub Date: April 2, 2024
ISBN: 9781250325372
Page Count: 304
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 28, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2024
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