An enticing survey of an era full of conflicts, some of which continue to affect present-day politics.
Schwartzwald, a clinical assistant professor at Brown University’s Warren Alpert School of Medicine, surveys European history from 1815 to 1945.
With the defeat of Napoleon I in the early 19th century, Europe had some restructuring to do. It was the goal of figures like the Austrian foreign minister and later Chancellor Klemens Wenzel von Metternich to “restore the old order and render it immune to a repetition of the turmoil so recently extinguished.” Of course, the turmoil was far from over and would reverberate during the next hundred-plus years. From 1815 to 1945 the great minds, leaders, and armies of Europe were hardly idle. The years covered saw fights for suffrage, exploration of the poles, and colonial disputes in Africa. Major conflicts ranged from the Crimean War to the Bolshevik Revolution to the Ottoman Revolution. This was also the time of the music of Claude Debussy, the artwork of Paul Cézanne, and scientific advancements such as Louis Pasteur’s germ theory. Many of the 20th-century portions of the book, however, involve World War I and World War II. Throughout it all, Schwartzwald paints an interconnected, bloody, and often uncomfortable portrait of how the Europe of the late 20th century emerged amid a welter of national conflicts, some of which continue to affect political debates. The emergence of a new Europe was far from a simple process. This broad survey from the author of The Rise of the Nation-State in Europe(2017) naturally covers a lot of ground, and some questions might have benefited from a more thorough explanation than it offers. How, for example, were the numbers of casualties recorded during different conflicts? How is it known that 1,000 (or perhaps 10,000) people were killed in an 1848 uprising in Paris? What exactly made William Osler’s Principles and Practice of Medicine“the standard medical textbook for decades”? Nevertheless, the overall timeline allows for a reasonable understanding of what happened and why. All told, the reader gets an edifying history even if some details fall by the wayside.
An enticing survey of an era full of conflicts, some of which continue to affect present-day politics.Pub Date: May 27, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-4766-8340-9
Page Count: 455
Publisher: McFarland
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
An erudite guide to the biblical world.
Revelations from the Old Testament.
“The Bible has no rivals when it comes to the art of omission, of not saying what everyone would like to know,” observes Calasso (1941-2021), the acclaimed Italian publisher, translator, and explorer of myth, gods, and sacred ritual. In this probing inquiry into biblical mysteries, the author meditates on the complexities and contradictions of key events and figures. He examines the “enigmatic nature” of original sin in Genesis, an anomaly occurring in no other creation myth; God’s mandate of circumcision for all Jewish men; and theomorphism in the form of Adam: a man created in the image of the god who made him. Among the individuals Calasso attends to in an abundantly populated volume are Saul, the first king of Israel; the handsome shepherd David, his successor; David’s son Solomon, whose relatively peaceful reign allowed him “to look at the world and study it”; Moses, steeped in “law and vengeance,” who incited the slaughter of firstborn sons; and powerful women, including the Queen of Sheba (“very beautiful and probably a witch”), Jezebel, and the “prophetess” Miriam, Moses’ sister. Raging throughout is Yahweh, a vengeful God who demands unquestioned obedience to his commandments. “Yahweh was a god who wanted to defeat other gods,” Calasso writes. “I am a jealous God,” Yahweh proclaims, “who punishes the children for the sins of their fathers, as far as the third and fourth generations.” Conflicts seemed endless: During the reigns of Saul and David, “war was constant, war without and war within.” Terse exchanges between David and Yahweh were, above all, “military decisions.” David’s 40-year reign was “harrowing and glorious,” marked by recurring battles with the Philistines. Calasso makes palpable schisms and rivalries, persecutions and retributions, holocausts and sacrifices as tribal groups battled one another to form “a single entity”—the people of Israel.
An erudite guide to the biblical world.Pub Date: Nov. 16, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-374-60189-8
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Chronology, photographs and personal knowledge combine to make a memorable commemorative presentation.
Jackie Kennedy's secret service agent Hill and co-author McCubbin team up for a follow-up to Mrs. Kennedy and Me (2012) in this well-illustrated narrative of those five days 50 years ago when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated.
Since Hill was part of the secret service detail assigned to protect the president and his wife, his firsthand account of those days is unique. The chronological approach, beginning before the presidential party even left the nation's capital on Nov. 21, shows Kennedy promoting his “New Frontier” policy and how he was received by Texans in San Antonio, Houston and Fort Worth before his arrival in Dallas. A crowd of more than 8,000 greeted him in Houston, and thousands more waited until 11 p.m. to greet the president at his stop in Fort Worth. Photographs highlight the enthusiasm of those who came to the airports and the routes the motorcades followed on that first day. At the Houston Coliseum, Kennedy addressed the leaders who were building NASA for the planned moon landing he had initiated. Hostile ads and flyers circulated in Dallas, but the president and his wife stopped their motorcade to respond to schoolchildren who held up a banner asking the president to stop and shake their hands. Hill recounts how, after Lee Harvey Oswald fired his fatal shots, he jumped onto the back of the presidential limousine. He was present at Parkland Hospital, where the president was declared dead, and on the plane when Lyndon Johnson was sworn in. Hill also reports the funeral procession and the ceremony in Arlington National Cemetery. “[Kennedy] would have not wanted his legacy, fifty years later, to be a debate about the details of his death,” writes the author. “Rather, he would want people to focus on the values and ideals in which he so passionately believed.”
Chronology, photographs and personal knowledge combine to make a memorable commemorative presentation.Pub Date: Nov. 19, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4767-3149-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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