A deeply researched, terrifically entertaining exploration of the London Zoo “through the eyes of some of the people who...
A whimsical work revisiting the English gentlemen of the early- to mid-19th century who envisioned the first Zoological Society of London.
London-based TV producer and author Charman (The Great War: A Nation’s Story, 2014, etc.) delves into an eclectic cast of characters who created London’s first ZSL in 1826. Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, returning home from a grueling stint in Singapore with the East India Company, resolved to create for London its own Jardin des Plantes, like the one he and his wife had admired in Paris. It would be, he decided, “a place of science, of investigation, of knowledge.” A member of the Royal Society, Raffles galvanized the new ZSL and obtained the land for such a venture in The Regent’s Park, designed by John Nash and located in the north of London. Upon Raffles’ death in 1826, the young architect Decimus Burton took over the challenging project, which included the designing of buildings over five acres where “humans could comfortably, elegantly, enjoyably observe creatures.” Indeed, writes Charman, Burton “was building for mankind, rather than for beasts,” and it was a huge hit, open to the public for one shilling per head in 1828. It soon expanded through a tunnel taking visitors elegantly from one side of the road to the other (more illustrations or a map would have been welcome). In her charming, engaging narrative, the author deftly assumes the points of view of her characters, in the spirit of a Victorian novelist. These included the first medical attendant, Charles Spooner, who was eventually dismissed because of the high mortality rate of the exotic animals (the wet, cold English winters were a detriment to many of them), and Charles Darwin, a corresponding member of the ZSL when he returned from his Beagle exploration in 1836, keen to observe the animals himself.
A deeply researched, terrifically entertaining exploration of the London Zoo “through the eyes of some of the people who made it happen.”Pub Date: April 11, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-68177-356-8
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Pegasus
Review Posted Online: Feb. 4, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
HISTORY | MODERN | WORLD | GENERAL HISTORY
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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