Lovers of intense research will enjoy this book. Readers with no sense of Indian history or geography and little...
A prolific chronicler of India, Allen (Kipling Sahib: India and the Making of Rudyard Kipling, 2009, etc.) shows just how addictive the country can be.
The author’s delight is obvious as he investigates the search for the great Indian leader, Ashoka. This is not so much a biography as a chronicle of that quest, and the details of the search become tedious. India-born and descended from generations serving the British Raj, Allen is well-acquainted with the archaeological sites of the stupas, rock and pillar edicts and Elephant Rocks. Throughout the 19th century, the Asiatic Society of Bengal archived copies of the great edicts Ashoka ordered carved there. These massive tablets pictured his history, explained Buddhism and addressed schisms that occurred during his reign. His revolutionary edicts enabled Ashoka to conquer by Dharma, undermining the authority of the Brahman by calling for religious tolerance and the banning of animal sacrifice. In order to understand the edicts, the first job was to decipher the language as it evolved through a number of influences. Nowhere does Allen address the idea that few might have been able to read any language in the 3rd century B.C. Admittedly, many readers will have limited tolerance for the detailed etymology and philology of the Greek, Pakrit, Sanskrit and Pali names for sites and characters. The author has a wealth of material available in the writings of British, Indian and Chinese who came before, helping him to establish the beginnings of Buddhism and its spread throughout the subcontinent. Allen’s enthusiasm and love for India are obvious; his waxing eloquent over the 23 volumes of Archaeological Survey Reports by Alexander Cunningham indicates a devotion few of us could share.
Lovers of intense research will enjoy this book. Readers with no sense of Indian history or geography and little archaeological curiosity will get bored.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4683-0071-0
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Overlook
Review Posted Online: Aug. 5, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2012
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 Yorker staff 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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