An odd but appealing mixture of science and literary analysis.
European and English science during the time of Shakespeare (1564–1616), as revealed in his works. It’s a peculiar juxtaposition, but it works…mostly.
Science writer Falk (In Search of Time: The Science of a Curious Dimension, 2008, etc.) has done an admirable job of boning up on the output of the playwright whose works contain lines, hints and metaphors that refer to the latest discoveries. Over the centuries, scientific revolutions are a dime a dozen. The author resists the temptation to single out his era but emphasizes that big changes were occurring (“Looking back after four centuries, it’s obvious to us that Shakespeare lived in a remarkable time”), and the biggest was a new description of the universe. In 1543, Copernicus’ publication of On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres, which replaced the Earth with the sun at the center of the universe, created no popular stir, but natural philosophers (“scientist” is a 19th-century word) noticed. Galileo, born the same year as Shakespeare, is best known, but several obscure Englishmen made major contributions. Thomas Harriot (1560–1621) may have examined the sky with a telescope at the same time. Thomas Digges (1546–1595), a neighbor of Shakespeare, was the first Englishman to promote Copernicus’ findings. Shakespeare himself makes liberal reference to this new universe but does not ignore astrology, still a respectable branch of astronomy, as well as Elizabethan medicine, magic, psychology and even theology. All Christian creeds find much to admire in Shakespeare, but skeptics also claim him as one of their own. Leaving no stone unturned, Falk devotes perhaps too many pages to enthusiasts who have pored over the works and discovered astonishing allegories, hidden messages and discoveries far ahead of his time.
An odd but appealing mixture of science and literary analysis.Pub Date: April 22, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-250-00877-0
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: March 4, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2014
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
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.
Rootin’-tootin’ history of the dry-gulchers, horn-swogglers, and outright killers who populated the Wild West’s wildest city in the late 19th century.
The stories of Wyatt Earp and company, the shootout at the O.K. Corral, and Geronimo and the Apache Wars are all well known. Clavin, who has written books on Dodge City and Wild Bill Hickok, delivers a solid narrative that usefully links significant events—making allies of white enemies, for instance, in facing down the Apache threat, rustling from Mexico, and other ethnically charged circumstances. The author is a touch revisionist, in the modern fashion, in noting that the Earps and Clantons weren’t as bloodthirsty as popular culture has made them out to be. For example, Wyatt and Bat Masterson “took the ‘peace’ in peace officer literally and knew that the way to tame the notorious town was not to outkill the bad guys but to intimidate them, sometimes with the help of a gun barrel to the skull.” Indeed, while some of the Clantons and some of the Earps died violently, most—Wyatt, Bat, Doc Holliday—died of cancer and other ailments, if only a few of old age. Clavin complicates the story by reminding readers that the Earps weren’t really the law in Tombstone and sometimes fell on the other side of the line and that the ordinary citizens of Tombstone and other famed Western venues valued order and peace and weren’t particularly keen on gunfighters and their mischief. Still, updating the old notion that the Earp myth is the American Iliad, the author is at his best when he delineates those fraught spasms of violence. “It is never a good sign for law-abiding citizens,” he writes at one high point, “to see Johnny Ringo rush into town, both him and his horse all in a lather.” Indeed not, even if Ringo wound up killing himself and law-abiding Tombstone faded into obscurity when the silver played out.
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21458-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
© 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
