A breezy read through millennia of human development.
Pop archaeology about individuals responsible for a series of significant firsts.
“I set out to find out about not just humankind’s ancient firsts, but also about the people who accomplished them,” writes Cassidy. “This is a book about who these people were. What they did. And why it mattered.” It is a book about individual achievement during the long period of prehistory, before writing attached names or histories to the individuals who accomplished these firsts. In each entry, Cassidy, whose previous book, And Then You’re Dead, examined the science behind numerous outlandish ways to die, assigns a name to each individual and provides description and a story based on scientific research. Some of the subjects include the inventions of fire and clothing; the discoveries of soap, the Americas, and Hawaii; the first case of smallpox; and “the murderer in the first murder mystery.” Regarding the invention of clothing, Cassidy pays tribute to the person “who ended the million-year streak of nudity. I’ll call him Ralph, after Ralph Lauren, because the evidence suggests that when our Ralph made his insight, he was interested in fashion as much as function. (And I’ll call him a him because in truth, I don’t know. I flipped a coin.)” So, we’re really not that much closer to knowing who specifically invented clothes or whether it is even possible to give such individual credit. What is interesting in the research has more to do with the why and how than the individual involved. Throughout these chapters, the subjects of which may strike readers as random, whoever did it remains a matter of speculation, but the significance of the legacy that followed is a story worth telling. The “Sources and Further Reading” section will prove helpful for readers seeking deeper dives into the various subjects.
A breezy read through millennia of human development.Pub Date: May 5, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-14-313275-2
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Penguin
Review Posted Online: Feb. 23, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
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
© Copyright 2024 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.
bookshelf
