Lacks the technical and stylistic sparkle of great popular history, but is nonetheless informative and even provocative.
Charlemagne not only conquered much of Europe but also created the idea of “Europe,” one that has lasted far longer than the empire, which began to fracture soon after his death in 814.
Historian and novelist Wilson (The Uncrowned Kings of England, 2004, etc.) takes us on a ride back into a time that antedates the periods of his previous works by a thousand years. The author has two interests here: to tell the “truth” about the historical Charlemagne (difficult to do with primary texts written by folks not principally interested in fact) and to examine how his life has affected ensuing western history. The author does a solid job of the former, peeling away layers of mythology from the biography (there are some good passages about The Song of Roland) and revealing that more than a thousand spurious stories have been published about the emperor. Wilson shows a paradoxical Charlemagne, a Christian warrior—a man who wished to conquer in the name of the Prince of Peace; who revered both learning and the learned; who wished his vast demesne to be populated by those who embraced the teachings of Jesus; whose two favorite books were the Bible and Augustine’s City of God; yet a man whose coevals respected and feared him for his military prowess. Charlemagne dies on page 130 (simple pleurisy felled the emperor), and Wilson devotes the rest of his text to his examination of Charles’ enduring influence. We follow him through the Reformation and Renaissance; we see parallels in the lives of Louis XIV and Napoleon; we see his resurrection in the vile mind of Hitler. And—finally—we recognize his desire to unify in the formation of the European Economic Community. Many useful maps appear throughout to help readers visualize the story.
Lacks the technical and stylistic sparkle of great popular history, but is nonetheless informative and even provocative.Pub Date: June 6, 2006
ISBN: 0-385-51670-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2006
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
An engrossing, intense, and highly descriptive narrative chronicling the ghastly conditions three pregnant women suffered...
The incredible true story of three Jewish women who survived the Holocaust.
Priska, Rachel, and Anka were married Jewish women in their early 20s when the Nazis took control of Europe. Like millions of other Jews, they were forced to give up their normal lives, all of their belongings, and their homes. Shuttled into ghettos and then off to one of the most notorious camps, Auschwitz II-Birkenau, they suffered through the Nazis’ increasing atrocities. But these three women all held a secret: they were pregnant. They were moved from Auschwitz and ended up in Mauthausen, another notorious death camp. With facing the most horrible conditions imaginable, all three gave birth right before the Allies accepted Germany’s surrender. In this meticulously detailed account, Holden (Haatchi & Little B: The Inspiring True Story of One Boy and His Dog, 2014, etc.) compiles an enormous amount of information from interviews, letters, historical records, and personal visits to the sites where this story unfolded. The graphic history places readers in the moment and provides a sense of the enduring power of love that Priska, Rachel, and Anka had for their unborn children and for the husbands they so desperately hoped to see after the war. Even though it occurred more than 70 years ago, the story’s truth is so chillingly portrayed that it seems as if it could have happened recently. These three women and their infants survived in the face of death, and, Holden writes, “their babies went on to have babies of their own and create a second and then a third generation, all of whom continue to live their lives in defiance of Hitler’s plan to erase them from history and from memory.”
An engrossing, intense, and highly descriptive narrative chronicling the ghastly conditions three pregnant women suffered through at the hands of the Nazis.Pub Date: May 5, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-237025-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2015
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