The first biography of Mehmet in decades finds the sultan a brilliant but elusive subject.
Turkey expert Freely (History/Univ. of the Bosphorus; Storm on Horseback: The Seljuk Warriors of Turkey, 2008, etc.) delivers an oblique portrait of the Ottoman ruler who considered himself another Alexander the Great.
Mehmet II (1432–1481) extended the Islamic empire well into Asia Minor, striking fear into the hearts of Christian warriors during the 30 years of his reign. The youngest son of sultan Murat, Mehmet was, as depicted by observers of the time, well educated in ancient knowledge, resolute and “in every way qualified to realise his soaring imperial ambitions.” He was also constantly at war, from the conquest of the Byzantine empire in 1453, to excursions into Bosnia, Albania the Crimea and Anatolia, to the defeat of Negroponte and, climactically, the capture of Otranto in 1480. Freely concentrates on the highlights of his subject’s life, such as Mehmet’s spectacular conquest of Constantinople. In addition to a grand naval fleet, the sultan also employed a highly effective, albeit motley, army and a corps of engineers, who built a road from the Bosphorus to the Golden Horn, allowing them to transport more than 70 ships overland. After first sending emissaries into the city to offer terms of surrender, which were rejected, Mehmet ordered the bombardment of the city and sacked it in a matter of days. He then made it the new capital of the Ottoman Empire and, by dint of his openness and devotion to the study of geography, astronomy and ancient works, rendered it a true “Renaissance City”—most impressively demonstrated by the construction of the glorious Topkapi palace. Freely dutifully recounts the facts, but he can’t get a handle on what made Mehmet such a fascinating man.
The first biography of Mehmet in decades finds the sultan a brilliant but elusive subject.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-59020-248-7
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Overlook
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2009
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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