By turns fascinating and perplexing, the story serves as the perfect microcosm of what the “noble” art of dueling had become...
An affronted merchant and his pugnacious banker meet on the field of honor with fatal results.
In 1826, one of the last recorded duels in Europe took place when reputable Scottish businessman David Landale challenged decommissioned officer and all-around rapscallion George Morgan, an agent for the Bank of Scotland. Their dispute stemmed from Morgan’s indiscreet sharing with various creditors of information pertaining to Landale’s financial problems after Landale, offended by the bank’s refusal to assist him during an economic depression, moved his account to a competing institution. At a time when a man’s reputation was as important as his wealth, if not more so, Landale soon faced a steady stream of creditors demanding repayment of loans as a result of Morgan’s imprudent and somewhat inaccurate revelations. Upon learning that Landale had written to Morgan’s superiors to complain of his ill usage, the agent accosted him in the street, whacking him across the back with an umbrella. Though less frequent than in times past, the duel was still a viable means for a gentleman to restore his honor in such circumstances, so Landale issued a challenge. When the two fought the next morning, the inexperienced Landale shot and killed Morgan. The author, a BBC correspondent and a descendant of Landale, interweaves into this personal narrative a riveting history of dueling, exploring its origins in the days when knights fought trials by combat and examining dueling customs throughout Europe and the United States.
By turns fascinating and perplexing, the story serves as the perfect microcosm of what the “noble” art of dueling had become by the mid-19th century: an outdated custom more likely to be a response to a petty slights than a redress for grievous wrongs.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2006
ISBN: 1-84195-825-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Canongate
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2006
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
© Copyright 2024 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.
bookshelf
