A swift, enjoyable treatment of one of the most significant battles of the period.
In this account of a pivotal battle in Scottish history, Goodwin (Fatal Colours: Towton 1461—England’s Most Brutal Battle, 2012, etc.) demonstrates that he understands that history is much more interesting in small bites.
This is the tale of two monarchs, brothers-in-law, one strong, one strong-headed, who were fated to clash. Henry VIII of England had entirely different views of war from those of his father. The elder looked to the joust and tournaments as a substitute for war, while Henry VIII, banned from jousting when he became Prince of Wales upon his brother’s death, craved the acclaim of battlefield success. James IV was king of Scots, father to all; the Scots looked to him for direction and impartial decisions while they unquestionably supported his call to arms. Goodwin provides a short background history while deftly describing James and Henry—with considerably less material available on James. The author is not especially friendly to Henry, portraying him more as a spoiled child than a princely leader. The real story is of the clash at Flodden a mere four years after Henry’s accession. Henry was actually off in France trying to emulate Henry V, and it was the Lord Howard, Earl of Surrey, who fought with his one-time friend James at Flodden in 1513. The author’s descriptions of the battle are excellent, without too many obscure details that usually just confuse the narrative. The importance of this battle cannot be overstated: It was the last medieval battle fought with pikes and the first modern one fought with artillery; it was also the beginning of the end of Scottish independence.
A swift, enjoyable treatment of one of the most significant battles of the period.Pub Date: Aug. 26, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-393-07368-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.
Rootin’-tootin’ history of the dry-gulchers, horn-swogglers, and outright killers who populated the Wild West’s wildest city in the late 19th century.
The stories of Wyatt Earp and company, the shootout at the O.K. Corral, and Geronimo and the Apache Wars are all well known. Clavin, who has written books on Dodge City and Wild Bill Hickok, delivers a solid narrative that usefully links significant events—making allies of white enemies, for instance, in facing down the Apache threat, rustling from Mexico, and other ethnically charged circumstances. The author is a touch revisionist, in the modern fashion, in noting that the Earps and Clantons weren’t as bloodthirsty as popular culture has made them out to be. For example, Wyatt and Bat Masterson “took the ‘peace’ in peace officer literally and knew that the way to tame the notorious town was not to outkill the bad guys but to intimidate them, sometimes with the help of a gun barrel to the skull.” Indeed, while some of the Clantons and some of the Earps died violently, most—Wyatt, Bat, Doc Holliday—died of cancer and other ailments, if only a few of old age. Clavin complicates the story by reminding readers that the Earps weren’t really the law in Tombstone and sometimes fell on the other side of the line and that the ordinary citizens of Tombstone and other famed Western venues valued order and peace and weren’t particularly keen on gunfighters and their mischief. Still, updating the old notion that the Earp myth is the American Iliad, the author is at his best when he delineates those fraught spasms of violence. “It is never a good sign for law-abiding citizens,” he writes at one high point, “to see Johnny Ringo rush into town, both him and his horse all in a lather.” Indeed not, even if Ringo wound up killing himself and law-abiding Tombstone faded into obscurity when the silver played out.
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21458-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
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