Sometimes exciting, sometimes tedious, always supported by a sturdy foundation of fact and tireless archival research. (3...
A thoroughly researched history of the origins of the Mafia in Sicily.
Journalist and translator Fentress (Eco’s The Search for the Perfect Language, 1995) reveals that the first printed occurrences of the word “mafia” date from the 1860s in the Palermo region. Derived from Palermitan slang for “flashy,” it soon grew to mean the “kingdom within a kingdom,” the “network of submerged power,” the criminal underworld. Fentress’s thesis is that “the story of the mafia cannot be understood except against the background of the revolution,” so he proceeds in his extremely detailed text to examine the uprisings in Sicily in 1820, 1848, 1860, and 1866—the latter “transforming itself into the mafia.” After an initial chapter dealing with pre-Mafia Sicily (beginning with the transfer of the island from Spain to Naples in 1743) and with a failed uprising in 1820, Fentress deals with each major revolutionary period in a separate chapter. The 1848 revolt succeeded briefly, only to be put down six months later by the Neapolitans. The 1860 revolution featured the derring-do of Garibaldi, and this chapter therefore contains some of Fentress’s most engaging narrative. In June 1860, after a “stunning military victory” by Garibaldi’s vastly outnumbered followers, the Neapolitans capitulated and Garibaldi assumed his stature as a Sicilian hero—if not a deity. Slipping into the interstice separating order from chaos was the criminal class known by all in the 1860s as the Mafia. (Fentress dismisses as “nonsense” the numerous folk stories about the Mafia’s medieval origins.) In an interesting section pointing out the parallels between criminals and politicians, Fentress observes that their talents “are broadly similar.” He also notes that the Mafia’s rise to power can be attributed partially to the Sicilian trust of “brigands and criminals . . . [rather] than the authorities.” Fentress ends his history with the chilling observation that the “mafia are the soldiers of the permanent revolution” (i.e., of the continuing “refusal to recognize . . . the legitimacy of authority”).
Sometimes exciting, sometimes tedious, always supported by a sturdy foundation of fact and tireless archival research. (3 maps, 18 plates)Pub Date: June 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-8014-3539-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Cornell Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2000
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
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.
A study of swimming as sport, survival method, basis for community, and route to physical and mental well-being.
For Bay Area writer Tsui (American Chinatown: A People's History of Five Neighborhoods, 2009), swimming is in her blood. As she recounts, her parents met in a Hong Kong swimming pool, and she often visited the beach as a child and competed on a swim team in high school. Midway through the engaging narrative, the author explains how she rejoined the team at age 40, just as her 6-year-old was signing up for the first time. Chronicling her interviews with scientists and swimmers alike, Tsui notes the many health benefits of swimming, some of which are mental. Swimmers often achieve the “flow” state and get their best ideas while in the water. Her travels took her from the California coast, where she dove for abalone and swam from Alcatraz back to San Francisco, to Tokyo, where she heard about the “samurai swimming” martial arts tradition. In Iceland, she met Guðlaugur Friðþórsson, a local celebrity who, in 1984, survived six hours in a winter sea after his fishing vessel capsized, earning him the nickname “the human seal.” Although humans are generally adapted to life on land, the author discovered that some have extra advantages in the water. The Bajau people of Indonesia, for instance, can do 10-minute free dives while hunting because their spleens are 50% larger than average. For most, though, it’s simply a matter of practice. Tsui discussed swimming with Dara Torres, who became the oldest Olympic swimmer at age 41, and swam with Kim Chambers, one of the few people to complete the daunting Oceans Seven marathon swim challenge. Drawing on personal experience, history, biology, and social science, the author conveys the appeal of “an unflinching giving-over to an element” and makes a convincing case for broader access to swimming education (372,000 people still drown annually).
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-61620-786-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
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