An absorbing and intimate history of the City of Lights. Willms, a senior editor of the newspaper SÅddeutsche Zeitung, combines the intellectual rigor of the historian with the accessibility of the journalist in this study of the French capital. The locus of French culture during the ancien rÇgime, Paris became the undisputed center of European politics during the revolutionary and Napoleonic periods. Carefully tracing the evolution of the metropolis, Willms demonstrates how political, economic, and cultural currents converged to make Paris the ``capital of Europe.'' More than London, Berlin, or Rome, Paris became the major protagonist in the history of its nation-state. Whereas Italy was divided into fiercely independent cities, England influenced by the landed gentry, and Germany dominated by Prussia, the fortunes of France were more strongly tied to its capital city. We can only witness the dynamism and expansion of the city with awe; its inhabitants have been unceasingly at work for centuries shaping and reshaping their physical environment. The city, as Willms presents it, becomes a living, breathing construction, reflecting the foibles, fantasies, and desires of its citizens. As Willms points out, it was in Paris, rather than London or New York, that the social and moral phenomena of modern life (including the rise of urban planning, an aggressive new version of nationalism, and a heightened emphasis on such matters as race and health) first appeared in the 19th century. The city has prospered and suffered because of this for the last century. The city's coat of arms depicts a sailing ship with the motto Fluctuat, nec mergitur (tossed by the waves, it does not sink). And while the 20th century did not sink Paris, the First World War did begin the long process of its displacement as the capital of Europe. Based on a wide range of sources, this is a work that will delight the specialist and the tourist alike. (maps and illustrations, not seen)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-8419-1245-9
Page Count: 456
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1996
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 Yorkerstaff 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
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