An often engaging book that shows readers the beginnings of the great voyages and the ancient symbols of seafaring...
An informed, freethinking re-creation of ancient trade routes, rooted in research and serious fieldwork.
McMahon starts by discussing Ireland’s wealth of glyphs and rich veins of copper and how great civilizations throughout history expanded their dominance by possessing various metals, including gold, copper, iron ore and tin (to alloy with copper and make bronze). He then moves on to the civilization of Egypt, pointing out how its symbolic language is similar to that found in Ireland and how it speaks of places: latitude, longitude, shadow angles, length of voyages and distinguishing landmarks. This was a sophisticated communication system, expressing a deep understanding of how to get from A to B, and the author steps into the shoes of ancient mariners to grasp how they read the world. Much of navigation, he notes, has to do with geometry—staying true to line by using water clocks, shifting shadows or Icelandic spar, a crystal that can help find the sun on a cloudy day. The author describes the tools that seafarers used to measure angles, heavenly cycles, the applications of Venus and the connections between the constellations. He sees a commonality in Native American Micmac and Egyptian glyphs and hypothesizes that sailors voyaged from Nubia to what is now Michigan in order to obtain pure deposits of copper. It seems like a fantastic proposition, but McMahon’s reasoning is far from far-fetched. Certain leaps of faith are required, however—for instance, the author asserts that the word “underworld” actually means “the West”—and occasional sentences are unclear (“The mysterious rotation of the main chamber of many mound designs from a central axis relates to the longitude of that location measured by the earthly view of the Venus pentagram”). More often than not, however, readers will glide along with ease and pleasurable surprise in the wake of McMahon’s investigations. This is a charged anthropological story, one that the author relates in a clipped, distilled manner. The sentences are often short and incantatory, all the while connecting the dots in an elegantly simple process of following history’s clues.
An often engaging book that shows readers the beginnings of the great voyages and the ancient symbols of seafaring communication.Pub Date: Dec. 11, 2014
ISBN: 978-1497395206
Page Count: 328
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 13, 2015
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 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
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
© 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
