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RAIDERS, RULERS, AND TRADERS

THE HORSE AND THE RISE OF EMPIRES

Chaffetz ably traces swathes of history across continents, underlining how horses made kingdoms and cultures.

Much of the story of human history rides on horseback, according to this appealing study.

“No animal has had as profound an impact on human history as the horse,” writes historian Chaffetz, author of A Journey Through Afghanistan, who provides convincing evidence for this view, tracking four millennia of history. The author’s primary focus is Eurasia and the vast empires of the Mongols and Mughals, although there are plenty of lively, relevant detours. Interestingly, horses were initially domesticated for milk and meat. Mare’s milk, when fermented into an alcoholic drink called ayraq, is still consumed widely by the people of the steppes. When humans discovered that they could ride horses, the first uses were for herding and hunting, but this quickly turned to warfare. With the right pasture conditions, horse populations grew quickly, and the army of Genghis Khan included more than 1 million of them. Chaffetz also delves into the use of horses in the Persian Empire, with Alexander the Great making great use of cavalry and chariots. Aside from military applications, the trading and selective breeding of horses led to important links between cultures. In western Europe, horses played a crucial role in social development, including in agriculture and transport, although overall numbers were limited by the shortage of open grasslands. The Spanish took horses to the New World, and there the equine population exploded. Several Native American tribes quickly incorporated horses into their cultures, as did later waves of white settlers. Chaffetz brings an authoritative tone to his complex tale, and he includes maps, illustrations, a glossary, and a particularly helpful timeline that runs from 20,000 B.C.E. into the mid-20th century. The result is a consistently engaging and highly informative narrative.

Chaffetz ably traces swathes of history across continents, underlining how horses made kingdoms and cultures.

Pub Date: July 30, 2024

ISBN: 9781324051466

Page Count: 384

Publisher: Norton

Review Posted Online: March 15, 2024

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2024

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KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON

THE OSAGE MURDERS AND THE BIRTH OF THE FBI

Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.

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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

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MARK TWAIN

Essential reading for any Twain buff and student of American literature.

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A decidedly warts-and-all portrait of the man many consider to be America’s greatest writer.

It makes sense that distinguished biographer Chernow (Washington: A Life and Alexander Hamilton) has followed up his life of Ulysses S. Grant with one of Mark Twain: Twain, after all, pulled Grant out of near bankruptcy by publishing the ex-president’s Civil War memoir under extremely favorable royalty terms. The act reflected Twain’s inborn generosity and his near pathological fear of poverty, the prime mover for the constant activity that characterized the author’s life. As Chernow writes, Twain was “a protean figure who played the role of printer, pilot, miner, journalist, novelist, platform artist, toastmaster, publisher, art patron, pundit, polemicist, inventor, crusader, investor, and maverick.” He was also slippery: Twain left his beloved Mississippi River for the Nevada gold fields as a deserter from the Confederate militia, moved farther west to California to avoid being jailed for feuding, took up his pseudonym to stay a step ahead of anyone looking for Samuel Clemens, especially creditors. Twain’s flaws were many in his own day. Problematic in our own time is a casual racism that faded as he grew older (charting that “evolution in matters of racial tolerance” is one of the great strengths of Chernow’s book). Harder to explain away is Twain’s well-known but discomfiting attraction to adolescent and even preadolescent girls, recruiting “angel-fish” to keep him company and angrily declaring when asked, “It isn’t the public’s affair.” While Twain emerges from Chernow’s pages as the masterful—if sometimes wrathful and vengeful—writer that he is now widely recognized to be, he had other complexities, among them a certain gullibility as a businessman that kept that much-feared poverty often close to his door, as well as an overarchingly gloomy view of the human condition that seemed incongruous with his reputation, then and now, as a humanist.

Essential reading for any Twain buff and student of American literature.

Pub Date: May 13, 2025

ISBN: 9780525561729

Page Count: 1200

Publisher: Penguin Press

Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025

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