A marvelously rigorous account of a notorious war criminal, edifying and moving.
A biography offers an analysis of the role played by the commandant of Auschwitz in the abuse and murder of its Jewish prisoners.
Not much in Rudolf Franz Ferdinand Höss’ youth presaged his infamous career as a Nazi—he grew up in a strict Roman Catholic household led by a father who wished him to become a priest. Nevertheless, he was the commandant of Auschwitz in southwestern Poland—a concentration camp that was central to Hitler’s plan to rid Europe of Jews—and “superintended the destruction of more than a million human beings,” becoming the “greatest mass murderer in history.” Primomo chronicles Höss’ early life and his ambitiously fast ascendancy up the SS ranks. The author focuses on the Nazi’s command of Auschwitz, which he turned, through ruthless efficiency, into a labor and extermination camp. When the Germans were finally defeated, Höss changed his name and fled, but he was eventually hunted down, captured, and testified in Nuremberg. His testimony, which the author meticulously examines, was invaluable to prosecutors. Höss was later tried for murder and executed in Poland. Primomo also assesses the commandant’s memoirs and his insistent claim that he never intentionally mistreated prisoners and even tried to stop whatever abuse occurred. But Höss relates with chilling impassivity the mass exterminations and refers to “the sight of the dead Jews scientifically as if they were nothing more than experimental lab rats.” The author scrupulously undermines Höss’ moral defense of himself and exposes him for the remorseless killer he was. Höss had intimate knowledge of Auschwitz’s barbaric conditions and how the “tormented life imposed on Auschwitz inmates was destroying their souls.” Primomo’s biography is unflinchingly painstaking and, while often disturbing to read, bears an important journalistic witness to some of the darkest atrocities in human history.
A marvelously rigorous account of a notorious war criminal, edifying and moving.Pub Date: July 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4766-8146-7
Page Count: 251
Publisher: McFarland
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Totally enthralling, masterful, and passionate, this book should garner serious consideration for a variety of book prizes.
A majestic biography of “history’s most creative genius.”
With many exceptional popular history books under his belt, Isaacson (History/Tulane Univ.; The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution, 2014, etc.) is close to assuming the mantle currently held by David McCullough. Here, Isaacson takes on another complex, giant figure and transforms him into someone we can recognize. The author believes the term “genius” is too easily bandied about, but Leonardo (1452-1519), from the tiny village of Vinci, near Florence, was “one of the few people in history who indisputably deserved—or, to be more precise, earned—that appellation.” He was self-taught and “willed his way to his genius.” With joyous zest, Isaacson crafts a marvelously told story “of a misfit: illegitimate, gay, vegetarian, left-handed, easily distracted, and at times heretical.” Like a child in a candy store, Isaacson often stops to exclaim; he shares his enthusiasm, and it’s contagious. For the author, the starting point are da Vinci’s notebooks, all 7,200 pages, the “greatest record of curiosity ever created.” Da Vinci’s groundbreaking, detailed drawings charted the inner worlds of the skull, heart, muscles, brain, birds’ wings, and a working odometer, along with doodles and numerous to-do lists. In his iconic Vitruvian Man, completed when he was 38 and struggling to learn Latin, “Leonardo peers at himself with furrowed brow and tries to grasp the secrets of his own nature.” Isaacson is equally insightful with the paintings, of which there are few. The Last Supper is a “mix of scientific perspective and theatrical license, of intellect and fantasy.” Regarding the uncompleted Mona Lisa, he writes “never in a painting have motion and emotion, the paired touchstones of Leonardo’s art, been so intertwined.” As Isaacson wisely puts it, we can all learn from Leonardo.
Totally enthralling, masterful, and passionate, this book should garner serious consideration for a variety of book prizes.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5011-3915-4
Page Count: 576
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 2, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Authoritative and thorough fare for royal watchers.
The longtime editor of Majesty magazine presents a refreshingly nonhagiographic biography of Prince Philip (b. 1921).
In her latest book on the royal family, Seward, a leading expert on the subject, paints a picture of a complex figure: a man of intelligence and energy with a wide array of achievements who has also been a bad father and a difficult, cantankerous boor. Born a prince in Greece, Philip's links to British, Danish, German, and Russian royal bloodlines were so impeccable that the fact that he came into his marriage with two suitcases of possessions to his name—plus a disgraced father, a schizophrenic mother, and four sisters married to Germans—was no obstacle. Third cousins, Elizabeth and Philip met when they were very young; the princess was utterly smitten at age 13. Philip's way with the ladies is well known—Daphne du Maurier is just one of many alleged lovers—but Seward downplays that element of his life. "What remains,” she writes, “is a combination of speculation, innuendo, and pure invention.” Ever the sportsman, Philip is "a very good cricketer, a world-class polo player, a race-winning yachtsman, and a world-champion carriage driver, and…has flown thousands of hours in many types of aircraft." He's also a passionate conservationist, a talented interior decorator, and co-author of a philosophy book that explores such questions as "What are we doing here? What is the point of existence?” Seward's all-seeing gaze follows the man into his rural retirement, by which time "the divorces of three out of four of his children, the divorce of his first grandson, and the problems with his grandson Prince Harry and, more poignantly, his own son Prince Andrew make a depressing appraisal." In 2019, at age 97, he was involved in a car accident that injured civilians, and he gave up his keys. Thereafter, he "pounced on the idea of resurrecting the late Queen Mother’s golf buggy." We leave him with his memories, tooling around the farm.
Authoritative and thorough fare for royal watchers.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-982129-75-0
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Oct. 31, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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