Strikes a neat balance between attentive commentary and dynamic storytelling.
The struggle for Latin American independence at the dawn of the 19th century recounted in all its gritty glory.
Documenting this ugly birth, Chasteen (Born in Blood and Fire: A Concise History of Latin America, 2005, etc.) leaves no stone unturned. Maps of key territories, a portrait gallery, a list of important figures, a chronology and a glossary are just a few of the appendages to his vivid account, making this a comprehensive yet concise overview of a major turning point in Latin American history. Scholars are likely to be familiar with most of the material; the strength of Chasteen’s graphic retelling lies in the colorful splashes of language he deploys to transport the reader back to this tumultuous time. Great stories abound. A decapitated horseman is dragged through battle, still strapped to the stirrup of his horse. Mexican revolutionary leader Miguel Hidalgo hands sweets to the firing squad about to execute him. Defenders of the Mexican village Cuaatla, besieged by the Spanish, eat “leather, iguanas, rats, and insects.” Chasteen utilizes the travel writings of Prussian adventurer and scientist Alexander von Humboldt to describe Latin America before the battles broke out. The main events, sparked by Napoleon’s occupation of Spain and Portugal in 1808, allow the author to write eloquently on the actions and personalities of figures such as the mercurial and enormously ambitious Simón Bolívar (president of no less than five countries), Argentinean military leader Manuel Belgrano and a host of major and minor figures whose actions have been carefully brought back to life in this compelling account. In the concluding chapter, Chasteen offers his thoughts on the slow evolution of Latin American society in the aftermath of independence.
Strikes a neat balance between attentive commentary and dynamic storytelling.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-19-517881-4
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2007
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.
Rootin’-tootin’ history of the dry-gulchers, horn-swogglers, and outright killers who populated the Wild West’s wildest city in the late 19th century.
The stories of Wyatt Earp and company, the shootout at the O.K. Corral, and Geronimo and the Apache Wars are all well known. Clavin, who has written books on Dodge City and Wild Bill Hickok, delivers a solid narrative that usefully links significant events—making allies of white enemies, for instance, in facing down the Apache threat, rustling from Mexico, and other ethnically charged circumstances. The author is a touch revisionist, in the modern fashion, in noting that the Earps and Clantons weren’t as bloodthirsty as popular culture has made them out to be. For example, Wyatt and Bat Masterson “took the ‘peace’ in peace officer literally and knew that the way to tame the notorious town was not to outkill the bad guys but to intimidate them, sometimes with the help of a gun barrel to the skull.” Indeed, while some of the Clantons and some of the Earps died violently, most—Wyatt, Bat, Doc Holliday—died of cancer and other ailments, if only a few of old age. Clavin complicates the story by reminding readers that the Earps weren’t really the law in Tombstone and sometimes fell on the other side of the line and that the ordinary citizens of Tombstone and other famed Western venues valued order and peace and weren’t particularly keen on gunfighters and their mischief. Still, updating the old notion that the Earp myth is the American Iliad, the author is at his best when he delineates those fraught spasms of violence. “It is never a good sign for law-abiding citizens,” he writes at one high point, “to see Johnny Ringo rush into town, both him and his horse all in a lather.” Indeed not, even if Ringo wound up killing himself and law-abiding Tombstone faded into obscurity when the silver played out.
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21458-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
© 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
