Filled with beauty, passion, greed, and evil, Collinsworth’s search is a spirited art history yarn.
Chasing down the mysterious history of a priceless painting.
Collinsworth unwinds a thoroughly captivating story about a single painting. She begins “some 530 years ago” in Milan with Ludovico, a powerful, wealthy duke who commissioned a portrait of his young lover, “most probably Cecilia Gallerani.” Barely two feet by a foot and a half, it was meticulously conceived and presented by a young Leonardo da Vinci. Known simply as Lady With an Ermine, it was one of only four known portraits of women he painted. Da Vinci, writes the author, “made Cecilia so palpably real with paint that we are able to imagine the faint pulse at the base of her throat and can almost hear her breath, but what he achieved is more than artistic precision. The portrait is not just a visual transmission of what she looked like; it’s also a psychological narrative.” Collinsworth goes into lush detail chronicling the colorful, often violent times when the work was created and reveals some fascinating biographical elements about da Vinci. When Ludovico married a 15-year-old named Beatrice, the painting hung in his private apartments while Cecilia and her son resided in the same building. When forced out by Beatrice, she took the painting with her. After Beatrice died, her conniving, art-collecting sister Isabella secured the painting from Cecilia—or did she? For the next 250 years, despite rumors, the painting’s location was unknown until 1800, when a roving Polish nobleman purchased it in Italy from an unknown seller as a gift for his mother in Russia, where it was subsequently misidentified and Cecilia’s “very essence” was lost. Collinsworth meticulously charts the painting’s circuitous path throughout Europe during political unrest and two world wars to a German governor-general who was busy creating “a systematic campaign to eradicate Polish culture.” Finally transferred to the National Museum in Kraków, the painting has since been exhibited around the world.
Filled with beauty, passion, greed, and evil, Collinsworth’s search is a spirited art history yarn.Pub Date: May 10, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-385-54611-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 25, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A determined if self-regarding portrait of a candidate striving to define herself and her campaign on her own terms.
An insider’s chronicle of a pivotal presidential campaign.
Several months into the mounting political upheaval of Donald Trump’s second term and following a wave of bestselling political exposés, most notably Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s Original Sin on Joe Biden’s health and late decision to step down, former Vice President Harris offers her own account of the consequential months surrounding Biden’s withdrawal and her swift campaign for the presidency. Structured as brief chapters with countdown headers from 107 days to Election Day, the book recounts the campaign’s daily rigors: vetting a running mate, navigating back-to-back rallies, preparing for the convention and the debate with Trump, and deflecting obstacles in the form of both Trump’s camp and Biden’s faltering team. Harris aims to set the record straight on issues that have remained hotly debated. While acknowledging Biden’s advancing decline, she also highlights his foreign-policy steadiness: “His years of experience in foreign policy clearly showed….He was always focused, always commander in chief in that room.” More blame is placed on his inner circle, especially Jill Biden, whom Harris faults for pushing him beyond his limits—“the people who knew him best, should have realized that any campaign was a bridge too far.” Throughout, she highlights her own qualifications and dismisses suggestions that an open contest might have better served the party: “If they thought I was down with a mini primary or some other half-baked procedure, I was quick to disabuse them.” Facing Trump’s increasingly unhinged behavior, Harris never openly doubts her ability to confront him. Yet she doesn’t fully persuade the reader that she had the capacity to counter his dominance, suggesting instead that her defeat stemmed from a lack of time—a theme underscored by the urgency of the book’s title. If not entirely sanguine about the future, she maintains a clear-eyed view of the damage already done: “Perhaps so much damage that we will have to re-create our government…something leaner, swifter, and much more efficient.”
A determined if self-regarding portrait of a candidate striving to define herself and her campaign on her own terms.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9781668211656
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
© Copyright 2025 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.
