Thirteen pieces by a first-rate scholar on diverse aspects of the intellectual and cultural history of western and central Europe, mainly from 1848 to 1914. Schorske, author of Fin-de-Siäcle Vienna: Politics and Culture (1980), for which he was awarded a Pulitzer Prize, and other works, has three foci: his own evolution as a historian and his impressively open response to the “new history” that has emerged during the past three decades; perceptions of, and design battles over, the modern city; and the early, formative years of modernist culture. Two of his most interesting pieces focus on the architectural shaping of the Ringstrasse, the grand boulevard that encircled the heart of post-1848 Vienna. Its magisterial buildings, Schorske says, largely reflected the values of both those loyal to Kaiser Franz Josef and those committed to a more liberal, though hardly fully democratic, state; both tendencies would be sharply criticized beginning around 1890 by such modernist intellectuals as the architect Adolf Loos and the journalist and playwright Karl Kraus. Only three of Schorske’s essays focus on one or more individuals—the English writer and utopian visionary William Morris, Wagner, Mahler, and Freud—but these are among the book’s best. Concerning the latter, Schorske traces Freud’s deep interest in the culture of ancient Egypt, as evidenced in his last major work, Moses and Monotheism, by first looking at the influence and mystique that three great western European cities (London, Paris, and Rome) played in Freud’s thought. Schorske is a very gifted writer and scholar, usually clearly and succinctly distilling his study of a great deal of material from many disciplines, avoiding historical and intellectual minutiae, and incorporating colorful anecdotes and quotes (for example, Baudelaire on the pleasure of “bathing himself in the [urban] crowd”). A pleasurable and stimulating read.
Pub Date: April 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-691-05977-2
Page Count: 232
Publisher: Princeton Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1998
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
