by John F. Kasson ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 2001
A broader array of semi-clad men—and a sharper focus—would have done Kasson and the reader a world of good. (80 b&w...
Men in loincloths and the crisis of modernity! What’s a turn-of-the-century boy to do?
Kasson (Rudeness and Civility, 2000) maintains that there was a metamorphosis of masculinity in the dawning years of the 20th century in America. By examining the lives of vaudeville star and bodybuilder Eugen Sandow, escape artist extraordinaire Erich Weiss (alias Harry Houdini), and Tarzan’s creator, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Kasson argues that masculinity faced a turning point due to the upheavals of modernity. In response to these cultural changes, the symbol of the white male body became, paradoxically, the symbol both of modernity itself and of the resistance to the modern age. The author’s argument, however, fails to support such a profound and complex thesis. In his three main chapters (“Who Is the Perfect Man? Eugen Sandow and a New Standard for America,” “The Manly Art of Escape: The Metamorphoses of Ehrich Weiss,” and “ ‘Still a Wild Beast at Heart’: Edgar Rice Burroughs and the Dream of ‘Tarzan’ ”), Kasson interprets these men as bellwethers of their time and place, exemplars of a particular vision of the virile white male body that assuaged anxieties about the changing world. A healthy sampling of photographs and illustrations do support the author’s interpretations and provide a vibrant picture of the changing image of masculinity—but, alas, two men who paraded around in loincloths and one who wrote about an ape-man offer precious little evidence for the foundation of an argument. Couple the paucity of subjects with a tendency to digress into biographies of these remarkable characters and that fascinating thesis gets lost in the shuffle.
A broader array of semi-clad men—and a sharper focus—would have done Kasson and the reader a world of good. (80 b&w photos and illustrations)Pub Date: July 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-8090-8862-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Hill and Wang/Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2001
Share your opinion of this book
More by John F. Kasson
BOOK REVIEW
by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
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
Share your opinion of this book
More by Elie Wiesel
BOOK REVIEW
by Elie Wiesel ; edited by Alan Rosen
BOOK REVIEW
by Elie Wiesel ; illustrated by Mark Podwal
BOOK REVIEW
by Elie Wiesel ; translated by Marion Wiesel
by Tom Clavin ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 21, 2020
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
Share your opinion of this book
More by Tom Clavin
BOOK REVIEW
by Tom Clavin
BOOK REVIEW
by Tom Clavin
BOOK REVIEW
by Bob Drury & Tom Clavin
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Hey there, book lover.
We’re glad you found a book that interests you!
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.
Don’t fret. We’ll find you.