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
In this meticulously detailed and evocative book, history comes alive, and it isn’t pretty.
A meditation on Austria’s capitulation to the Nazis. The book won the 2017 Prix Goncourt.
Vuillard (Sorrow of the Earth: Buffalo Bill, Sitting Bull and the Tragedy of Show Business, 2017, etc.) is also a filmmaker, and these episodic vignettes have a cinematic quality to them. “The play is about to begin,” he writes on the first page, “but the curtain won’t rise….Even though the twentieth of February 1933 was not just any other day, most people spent the morning grinding away, immersed in the great, decent fallacy of work, with its small gestures that enfold a silent, conventional truth and reduce the entire epic of our lives to a diligent pantomime.” Having established his command of tone, the author proceeds through devastating character portraits of Hitler and Goebbels, who seduced and bullied their appeasers into believing that short-term accommodations would pay long-term dividends. The cold calculations of Austria’s captains of industries and the pathetic negotiations of leaders who knew that their protestations were mainly for show suggest the complicated complicity of a country where young women screamed for Hitler as if he were a teen idol. “The bride was willing; this was no rape, as some have claimed, but a proper wedding,” writes Vuillard. Yet the consummation was by no means as smoothly triumphant as the Nazi newsreels have depicted. The army’s entry into Austria was less a blitzkrieg than a mechanical breakdown, one that found Hitler stalled behind the tanks that refused to move as those prepared to hail his emergence wondered what had happened. “For it wasn’t only a few isolated tanks that had broken down,” writes the author, “not just the occasional armored truck—no, it was the vast majority of the great German army, and the road was now entirely blocked. It was like a slapstick comedy!” In the aftermath, some of those most responsible for Austria’s fall faced death by hanging, but at least one received an American professorship.
In this meticulously detailed and evocative book, history comes alive, and it isn’t pretty.Pub Date: Sept. 25, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-59051-969-1
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Other Press
Review Posted Online: June 17, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2018
GENERAL HISTORY | MODERN | WORLD | MILITARY | HISTORY
BOOK REVIEW
An informative, nostalgic evocation of a special urban dining experience.
An account of once-popular New York restaurants that had a rich social and cultural history.
“Since, by choice or historical necessity, exile and travel were defining aspects of Jewish life, somewhere a Jew was always eating out,” observes cartoonist and MacArthur fellow Katchor (Illustration/Parsons, the New School; Hand-Drying in America, 2013, etc.) in his exhaustively researched, entertaining, and profusely illustrated history of Jewish dining preferences and practices. The Garden of Eden, he notes wryly, was “the first private eating place open to the public,” serving as a model for all the restaurants that came after: cafes, cafeterias, buffets, milk halls, lunch counters, diners, delicatessens, and, especially, dairy restaurants, a favorite destination among New York Jews, which Katchor remembers from his wanderings around the city as a young adult. Dairy restaurants, because they served no meat, attracted diners who observed kosher laws; many boasted a long menu that included items such as mushroom cutlet, blintzes, broiled fish, vegetarian liver, and fried eggplant steak. Attracted by the homey appearance and “forlorn” atmosphere of these restaurants, Katchor set out to uncover their history, engaging in years of “aimless reading in the libraries of New York and on the pages of the internet,” where he found menus, memoirs, telephone directories, newspaper ads, fiction, and food histories that fill the pages of his book with colorful anecdotes, trivia, and food lore. Although dairy restaurants were popular with Jewish immigrants, their advent in the U.S. predated immigrants’ demand for Eastern European meatless dishes. The milk hall, often located in parks, resorts, or spas, gained popularity throughout 19th-century Europe. Franz Kafka, for example, treated himself to a glass of sour milk from a milk pavilion after a day in a Prague park. Jews were not alone in embracing vegetarianism. In Europe and America, shunning meat was inspired by several causes, including utopian socialism, which sought to distance itself from “the beef-eating aristocracy”; ethical preferences; and health concerns. A meatless diet relieved digestive problems, many sufferers found.
An informative, nostalgic evocation of a special urban dining experience.Pub Date: March 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-8052-4219-5
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Schocken
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
PERSPECTIVES
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