A welcome and well-written synthesis of recent scholarship.
A measured reassessment of Napoleonic imperialism.
Esdaile (History/Univ. of Liverpool; Fighting Napoleon: Guerillas, Bandits and Adventurers in Spain, 1808–1814, 2004, etc.) notes that Bonaparte’s champions have burnished a positive image of the emperor as a heroic figure who sought to defend the honor of France, preserve the French Revolution and free all Europe from the rule of the old order. Modern academic histories challenge or debunk much of this glowing portrait. The author draws nicely on their scholarship to offer a broad, balanced account of the prolonged conflict known as the Napoleonic Wars (1803–15). Although Napoleon’s “aggression, egomania and lust for power” were the main driving forces, writes Esdaile, the wars also reflected complex issues involving relations among many European monarchies that had been at war throughout the 18th century. Recounting events from Britain’s declaration of war on France in 1803 to Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo and the dissolution of much of the French colonial empire, the author takes pains to explain how the rulers of Austria, Russia, Sweden and other countries acted in their own right and not simply as foils for Napoleon. The emperor is seen as a young opportunist who became a brilliant general convinced of his own infallibility and driven by the need for military and personal glory. (“Frenchmen!” he declared to his army in 1807, at the height of his power. “You have been worthy of yourselves and of me.”) Always overstretching, eschewing compromise and declaring, “the word impossible is not in my dictionary,” he pushed his way across the Pyrenees into Spain and Portugal, precipitating his eventual downfall. Although pausing often to reflect on the motives and actions of key players, Esdaile’s narrative never falters. He offers a panoramic view of the pan-European warfare and traces the emergence in this conflict of a new military age marked by far larger field armies, more and longer battles, a new stress on news management and propaganda and the rise of modern government bureaucracies.
A welcome and well-written synthesis of recent scholarship.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-670-02030-0
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 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 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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