A hodgepodge of uncanny associations and curious theories.
A sinuous exploration of ancient texts in an effort to uncover the reality of gods, their lands and the fall of man.
Rogiers attempts to find evidence of a species he has dubbed Homo supersapiens, who resided in the “Land of the Gods” until it was destroyed by “the Universal Soul.” According to the author, that’s the moment when the lesser species Homo sapiens stepped into the void. The book is a pleasurable frolic through the works of the ancient Greeks, Romans, Indians and Germanics as well as a slew of supporting myths, folk tales and fairy tales. Rogiers has found enough commonalities among the stories to be intrigued by the notion that they may have come from a common thread: ages of declining splendor, creatures of extraordinary powers, a great battle and final catastrophe that brought a Golden Age to a thunderous close. “How can I prove my theory?” the author wonders rhetorically. It doesn’t appear that he can. For all the spadework and intelligence Rogiers has brought to finding similarities in the tales, he leaves more holes than he constructs satisfactory bridges. The stories feature disparate names and dates and events that don’t jibe as well as a host of questions. Is the theory of evolution a “party line” or the best available explanation? If supersapiens were super, why did they vanish? (His unhappy conclusion: they degenerated “the moment they began to interbreed with humans,” in another apparent blow to so-called evolution.) Moreover, why shouldn’t various human cultures each fashion a story which is universal to the human condition? While fascinating questions are opened up–for instance, why the emphasis on the whiteness of supersapiens’ skin?–Rogiers leaves more unanswered than answered.
A hodgepodge of uncanny associations and curious theories.Pub Date: May 31, 2007
ISBN: 978-1-4196-6123-5
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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 Yorker staff 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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