A leisurely walk through a former inferno with a most eloquent Virgil.
Celebrated Civil War historian McPherson (Fields of Fury, 2002, etc.) holds our hands, points our heads, and evokes awe-ful and sanguinary images of July 1863 in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
Like many other entries in the Crown Journeys series, the text is brief, lucid, and learned. McPherson (History/Princeton) begins with an allusion to Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address and ends with its full text. An unabashed champion of the site’s importance—“More than any other place in the United States,” he declares, “this battlefield is indeed hallowed ground”—the author knows this ground intimately and has conducted uncountable tours there. He educates, even inspires with fluid ease. We learn along our vicarious walk that the battlefield comprises some ten square miles, that the town was only 75 miles north of the nation’s capital and had a population of roughly 2,400 in 1863, that some 4,000 acres now comprise the park. We learn as well that the total number of American casualties there over three days (50,000 or so) is tenfold the number on D-day. McPherson devotes a chapter to each of the battle’s three days, beginning with the first shot on July 1 and ending with Lee’s escape. (The author reminds us that nearly two years of fighting remained after Gettysburg.) McPherson’s unsurpassed scholarship enables him to debunk many myths: blue and gray did not share Spangler’s Spring, he states, and there was probably not a huge supply of shoes in town to attract the footsore Confederates. Like other military historians, he is sometimes romantic, honoring rather than analyzing, and he needs to re-check the meaning of Gertrude’s line to Hamlet about a protesting lady. More often, though, he frames his sound insights in perfect sentences, writing about one prevaricating memoirist, for example, “His sword was mightier than his pen—or at least more truthful.”
A leisurely walk through a former inferno with a most eloquent Virgil.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-609-61023-6
Page Count: 144
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2003
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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