A wise, eye-opening interdisciplinary view of an era that “featured numerous exciting conceptions of the human form.”
An in-depth look at the medieval conception of the human body.
Some readers may be put off initially by this head-to-toe dissection of the body, but they should press on to encounter a delightful mixture of thought, experiment, discovery, and religion. In his debut book, Hartnell (Art History/Univ. of East Anglia, Norwich) uses his knowledge of art history and the drawings and paintings that showed then-current thinking on organs, bones, blood, and the body in general. The key to understanding this era is the interaction among diverse cultures. “A shared classical heritage undeniably binds together the medieval history of the regions on all sides of the Mediterranean,” writes the author, “separating them somewhat from the busy parallel stories of the Far East, India, China, sub-Saharan Africa or the pre-Columbian Americas. Three principal inheritors of the legacy of Rome [Byzantium, Western and Central Europe, and the Islamic world] come to the fore, each representing a different texture of the medieval bodies that I want to try to trace.” With the exception of the Crusades, the Muslim kingdoms thrived through tolerance for other religions and cultures, enabling trade and, most importantly, the sharing of ideas. For Hartnell, two of the most interesting illustrations are the “Hebrew Bloodletting Figure” and the “German Wound Man.” The bloodletting figure provided a map of the most efficacious spots to bleed a patient while the Wound Man offered cures for punctures and other wounds as well as instructions on the placement of a styptic. Among other intriguing topics, the author discusses a 10th-century Arabic author who provided dental advice and instructions on suturing wounds. As Hartnell shows, medieval conceptions of medicine and the body fluctuated between tangible and fantastic and often conflated thoughts, philosophy, and religion with artistic imagination. When we consider that observational dissections didn’t regularly take place until the 1500s, the scope of the work of these cultures is quite impressive.
A wise, eye-opening interdisciplinary view of an era that “featured numerous exciting conceptions of the human form.”Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-324-00216-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2019
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
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
