A sometimes-dense but essential history for wine aficionados.
An extensive history of Californian wines from their humble beginnings in the 18th century to modern international acclaim.
Briscoe’s (The Lost Poems of Cangjie, 2017, etc.) history of Golden State wine begins with the Franciscan monks who first tended vineyards in the San Francisco Mission and produced wine according to the old traditions that they brought to the New World. These wines were mostly used for religious purposes and were hardly comparable to later, prestigious vintages. Although the 1849 Gold Rush brought a population explosion and international acclaim to San Francisco’s food scene, Briscoe notes that now “California is as renowned for its wines as San Francisco is for its food, though the former arrived much more slowly.” Briscoe examines every detail of that slow progression. Although he rightly focuses mostly on the City by the Bay and its surrounding wine countries, he leaves no stone unturned in his survey of the state as a whole, describing a lost Los Angeles that was filled with vineyards and the numerous efforts to produce a great product across California. Historic events intervened, including devastating pests, Prohibition, and the great San Francisco earthquake of 1906. But Briscoe also tells of the resilience of such figures as Robert Mondavi, who made good on the promise of the West Coast’s grapes, finally earning the recognition of Paris in the late 20th century. Briscoe’s attention to detail is staggering, and as a result, his exhaustive book is filled with tidbits that will make for fine dinner party anecdotes. For example, he notes the extensive efforts to salvage 2 million gallons of wine after the aforementioned quake by pumping it out of wreckage and chemically changing it into a “fortifying brandy.” He also includes small inserts that offer further information about particular people and practices, as well as images of labels from early vineyards. The overall approach is rather dry, which can make the hefty work feel like a textbook at times—or even a bit of a chore. Nevertheless, Briscoe’s passion for California and its wine often shines through, and the book will offer many surprises to patient readers.
A sometimes-dense but essential history for wine aficionados.Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-943859-49-8
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Univ. of Nevada
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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