A surprisingly light-footed look at fundamental questions of authority and identity.
Ravel (History/MIT) grapples skillfully with a slippery cause célèbre involving imposture and bigamy in the closing years of Louis XIV’s reign.
Why would an aristocrat abandon his noble status, his well-heeled wife and all they afforded him in 17th-century France to marry an innkeeper’s daughter and pass himself off as a commoner? Examining the curious case of Louis de la Pivardière, aka Dubouchet, Ravel delves into the creaking structure of aristocratic privilege, identity and jurisprudence in a period of theological and intellectual uncertainty. Born in Berry, the youngest son of a nobleman, Louis was “essentially disinherited” and joined the army; in 1687 he married Marguerite Chauvelin, a landowning widow with six children. For eight years they lived on her rural estate, though Louis was frequently absent to seek a commissioned post in the army. During the spring of 1695, while staying in Auxerre, he met the teenage Marie Pillard and married her, subsequently siring several children. When Louis made a visit to Marguerite in 1697, news of his bigamy had reached her. They quarreled, and he repeated rumors that she was carrying on with the head of the local priory. Louis disappeared the same night, and maidservants who saw or overheard something claimed that Marguerite had killed him. However, no body was found, and a man who seemed to be Louis was later hauled before the Palais de Justice. Ravel wades through a dizzying array of testimony about the putative murder and parses Parisian magistrates’ exhaustive attempts to ascertain whether the prisoner before them was indeed Louis and Marguerite should be exonerated. In the end, Attorney General Henri-François d’Aguesseau disentangled the threads sufficiently to allow the court to reach a verdict, though not to allay all doubts. Spinoff stage plays ensured that the scandal attained the status of legend. Ravel enlists similar cases (e.g., Martin Guerre) to enrich his engrossing comparative study.
A surprisingly light-footed look at fundamental questions of authority and identity.Pub Date: July 10, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-618-19731-6
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2008
Harari delivers yet another tour de force.
A highly instructive exploration of “current affairs and…the immediate future of human societies.”
Having produced an international bestseller about human origins (Sapiens, 2015, etc.) and avoided the sophomore jinx writing about our destiny (Homo Deus, 2017), Harari (History/Hebrew Univ. of Jerusalem) proves that he has not lost his touch, casting a brilliantly insightful eye on today’s myriad crises, from Trump to terrorism, Brexit to big data. As the author emphasizes, “humans think in stories rather than in facts, numbers, or equations, and the simpler the story, the better. Every person, group, and nation has its own tales and myths.” Three grand stories once predicted the future. World War II eliminated the fascist story but stimulated communism for a few decades until its collapse. The liberal story—think democracy, free markets, and globalism—reigned supreme for a decade until the 20th-century nasties—dictators, populists, and nationalists—came back in style. They promote jingoism over international cooperation, vilify the opposition, demonize immigrants and rival nations, and then win elections. “A bit like the Soviet elites in the 1980s,” writes Harari, “liberals don’t understand how history deviates from its preordained course, and they lack an alternative prism through which to interpret reality.” The author certainly understands, and in 21 painfully astute essays, he delivers his take on where our increasingly “post-truth” world is headed. Human ingenuity, which enables us to control the outside world, may soon re-engineer our insides, extend life, and guide our thoughts. Science-fiction movies get the future wrong, if only because they have happy endings. Most readers will find Harari’s narrative deliciously reasonable, including his explanation of the stories (not actually true but rational) of those who elect dictators, populists, and nationalists. His remedies for wildly disruptive technology (biotech, infotech) and its consequences (climate change, mass unemployment) ring true, provided nations act with more good sense than they have shown throughout history.
Harari delivers yet another tour de force.Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-51217-2
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2018
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
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