by Julia Barrett ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 1993
A witty, amusing sequel to Pride and Prejudice from the pseudonymous Barrett (in real life, Julia Braun Kessler and Gabrielle Donnelly, Holy Mother, 1987). The title seems to anticipate purists' reactions. But if you can get beyond the hubris of anyone's presuming to pick up where Jane Austen left off, you'll be rewarded by an engaging Regency romance and the pleasure of following old friends (Elizabeth, Georgiana, Jane, Darcy) and nemeses (Lady Catherine, Mr. Collins, Wickham) into their new lives. Here, Georgiana Darcy has just come out into society and, having had her heart broken in P and P by the rakish young officer Wickham, has vowed never to love again. Enter the dashing Captain Heywood, who manages to charm her, and also to capture the interest of Caroline Bingley and Anne De Bourgh, Lady Catherine's daughter. Meanwhile, young architect Mr. James Leigh- Cooper has been brought to Pemberly to renovate its grounds, and he conceives an affection for Georgiana, but, as with Elizabeth and Fitzwilliam Darcy in the early days, every interchange between Georgiana and Mr. Leigh-Cooper turns into a spat and for most of the novel they believe they despise each other. At the same time, Elizabeth, though blissfully happy as Darcy's wife, is downcast by another scandal breaking out within her family, just as their reputation was beginning to recover from Lydia's elopement with Wickham: her aunt Philips has been accused of thievery from a shop and is in jail. This confirms the opinions of Elizabeth's new neighbors, especially the overbearing Lady Catherine, that Darcy debased himself by marrying into the Bennett family. The seemingly disparate plot strands of Georgiana's affection for Captain Heywood and of the case against Aunt Philips will interweave in a clever and surprising way. For Austen lovers not affronted by the whole concept, a pleasant diversion. Otherwise, a stylish entertainment that may lead some to the unsurpassable Jane.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-87131-736-2
Page Count: 240
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1993
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edited by Julia Barrett
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by Howard Zinn ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1979
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
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by Howard Zinn ; adapted by Rebecca Stefoff with by Ed Morales
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by Howard Zinn with Ray Suarez
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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
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