A gorgeous book that fully immerses readers in Venetian history, both visually and through its vivid narrative.
Spenuzza explores the role of women in the Venetian Republic in this nonfiction work.
The Venetian Republic, a sovereign state that existed in northeastern Italy from 697 until 1797, has long held a unique place in the history of Europe. Centered around the city of Venice, at various points in time the republic included holdings in Greece, Slovenia, and Cyprus. This cultural diversity, combined with Venice’s emergence as a vibrant commercial center, made the republic “a dominant force in the Adriatic and Mediterranean.” While the city’s wealthy merchants, nobles, and oligarchs have long dominated the historical narratives of Venice, the author focuses this book’s attention on the city’s women. Fascinating vignettes include the stories of women such as Anna Notaras, whose printing press disseminated ancient Greek literature throughout 15th-century Europe, and Gracia Mendes Nasi, a wealthy Jewish philanthropist who found refuge in Venice during the Portuguese Inquisition. In art and music, women painters such as Marietta Robusti (whose self-portrait from the 1580s is featured on the book’s cover) and operatic “divas” contributed the city’s cultural landscape despite “the constraints of patriarchal Venetian society.” The strength of the book is Spenuzza’s impressive research, backed by almost 250 endnotes, which allowed her to unearth the narratives of women who are largely absent from archival sources and whose “lives did not even emerge fully fleshed from dusty antiquarian books.” A member of the board of directors for multiple cultural institutions (including California’s Segerstrom Center for the Arts and the Orange County Museum of Art) and the author of several historical novels, Spenuzza combines her keen artistic eye with an engaging writing style. The book also doubles as a travelogue and memoir, with the author recounting her own travels to Venice from 1973 to 2023 and her friendship with the countess of a “crumbling palazzo,” whom the author refers to affectionately as “Nonna.” The book is richly adorned with more than 100 full-color photographs and reproductions of paintings, statues, advertisements, glassware, and other ephemera.
A gorgeous book that fully immerses readers in Venetian history, both visually and through its vivid narrative.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2023
ISBN: 9780998703183
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Libros Publishing
Review Posted Online: Jan. 29, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.
A coffee-table book celebrates Michelle Obama’s sense of fashion.
Illustrated with hundreds of full-color photographs, Obama’s chatty latest book begins with some school portraits from the author’s childhood in Chicago and fond memories of back-to-school shopping at Sears, then jumps into the intricacies of clothing oneself as the spouse of a presidential candidate and as the first lady. “People looked forward to the outfits, and once I got their attention, they listened to what I had to say. This is the soft power of fashion,” she says. Obama is grateful and frank about all the help she got along the way, and the volume includes a long section written by her primary wardrobe stylist, Koop—28 years old when she first took the job—and shorter sections by makeup artists and several hair stylists, who worked with wigs and hair extensions as Obama transitioned back to her natural hair, and grew out her bangs, at the end of her husband’s second term. Many of the designers of the author’s gowns, notably Jason Wu, who designed several of her more striking outfits, also contribute appreciative memories. Besides candid and more formal photographs, the volume features many sketches of her gowns by their designers, closeups on details of those gowns, and magazine covers from Better Homes & Gardens to Vogue. The author writes that as a Black woman, “I was under a particularly white-hot glare, constantly appraised for whether my outfits were ‘acceptable’ and ‘appropriate,’ the color of my skin somehow inviting even more judgment than the color of my dresses.” Overall, though, this is generally a canny, upbeat volume, with little in the way of surprising revelations.
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780593800706
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
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