Still, despite its flaws, a fascinating story.
The relationship between Brahe and Kepler, two of the giants of astronomy, has long been known to be stormy, but did it end in murder?
Yes, declare the authors, novelist and State Department veteran Joshua (Ghost Image, 2002) and former German television producer/reporter Anne-Lee. Tycho Brahe (1546–1601) was of noble Danish extraction, his family close to the king. Famously independent, he fought a duel in his early days and married a commoner in defiance of law and custom. His pursuit of science was also a rebellion, but he turned it to his benefit by obtaining the king’s backing for a lavish observatory. A new king and a subsequent change in political winds ended Brahe’s influence in Denmark, so he went to the court of the Holy Roman Emperor in Prague. There he met and hired as his assistant Johannes Kepler (1571–1630), a mathematician of humble origin, trained for the ministry. On the basis of his self-analytical writings, quoted extensively here, Kepler’s career comprised a series of feuds. That pattern continued with Brahe, whose astronomical observations awaited analysis to support his eccentric theory of the solar system. Kepler needed the job and had the math skills. But he also had his own theories, based on the Platonic solids, which he hoped Brahe’s data would support. Brahe, however, was miserly with his material, fearful of its being stolen. By 1601, the Gilders argue, Kepler decided to get his hands on the data by engineering the older scientist’s death; modern forensic analysis of Brahe’s remains suggests mercury poisoning. Kepler demonstrably had the motive, knowledge, and opportunity to destroy his mentor, from whose observations he derived his laws of planetary motion. The authors marshal the evidence effectively and vividly paint the historical context of their tale. But they work so hard to portray Brahe as a magnanimous genius and Kepler as an ungrateful villain that readers may take their verdict at less than face value.
Still, despite its flaws, a fascinating story.Pub Date: May 18, 2004
ISBN: 0-385-50844-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2004
BOOK REVIEW
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
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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