Riveting portrait of a complex woman whose deeds defy easy moral judgments.
A “biography” of the mythical, murderous sorceress.
British classicist Hall draws on numerous ancient, mostly Greek sources to craft a colorful account of Medea’s life in five “acts.” “A Colchis Childhood” limns a clever, restless girl developing formidable supernatural powers and chafing under the limitations imposed by her domineering, misogynistic father. It’s lust at first sight when handsome Jason arrives, and “Escape on the Argo” details Medea’s intricate schemes to help him steal the golden fleece and their subsequent flight, capped by the murder of her brother and the tossing of his dismembered body from the ship to delay pursuers. Depicted by Hall as impulsive yet oddly passive and needy, Jason continues to rely on Medea’s plots and powers in “Trouble in Thessaly,” where she bears their two sons and lays plans to restore him to his father’s usurped throne; thanks to Jason’s ineptitude and betrayal by an ally, they are instead banished. “Crisis in Corinth” draws heavily on Euripides’ famous play to chronicle Jason’s decision to marry King Creon’s daughter and Medea’s horrific revenge—killing not only her rival and Creon but her two sons. Her magical abilities and gift for manipulating everyone around her gain her “Asylum in Athens,” where she displaces Aegeus’ queen and bears him a son, but it all goes south when she fails to poison his other son, Theseus, and is rejected by her own adored child. We last see Medea taking off “into the darkening sky” in a chariot drawn by flying serpents. Two final chapters trace “Medea’s Afterlives” in works of art and “Medea As Women’s Heroine.” Hall’s use of highly colloquial dialogue is somewhat jarring—she cites Euripides in justification—but her vivid characterizations, atmospheric scene-setting, and propulsive narrative pace will appeal to a general readership beyond the market suggested by the imprint of a university press.
Riveting portrait of a complex woman whose deeds defy easy moral judgments.Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2026
ISBN: 9780300270723
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2026
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
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
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