The Emperor’s exile contained fewer fireworks than the years when he shook up the world, but no period in his life was dull....
A jaundiced look at the traditional account of Napoleon’s final years on St. Helena.
The usual history of this period begins with the Emperor’s abdication (his second) after Waterloo. A month later, he presented himself to the captain of a British frigate blockading Rochfort, hoping for a comfortable retirement in England. Instead, the government transported him and his retinue to an isolated island in the South Atlantic. Placed in charge was Major-General Sir Hudson Lowe, a mean-spirited officer who subjected his prisoner to six years of petty harassment and deprivation. Not only historians but historical figures from the Duke of Wellington to Charles de Gaulle have agreed Lowe was unfit for his job. English journalist Giles (The Locust Years: The Story of the Fourth French Republic, 1994, etc.) is not so sure. He points out that Napoleon was an impossibly difficult person: arrogant, demanding, constantly complaining. But he had plenty to complain about, as Lowe’s superiors had given orders that guaranteed friction. For example, he was forbidden to address the prisoner as “Emperor.” Letters, gifts, and even book dedications containing this title were confiscated. A more sophisticated governor would have interpreted his duties more liberally, but Lowe was excessively conscientious. Napoleon took an instant dislike to him, refusing to see him during the final four years. A torrent of complaints from Napoleon and his suite poured into Britain (France, under the restored Bourbons, was uninterested), producing much debate in newspapers and parliament. Lowe’s superiors, however, remained supportive. Always admired by a minority of the English, Napoleon grew even more popular after his death. Biographies quickly appeared, all portraying the governor as Napoleon’s tormenter. Lowe’s career stagnated, and he died a bitter man.
The Emperor’s exile contained fewer fireworks than the years when he shook up the world, but no period in his life was dull. This is a lively, readable account, and its revisionist view rings true.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-7867-0906-5
Page Count: 320
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2001
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 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
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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