A superb blend of social history and material culture, essential for students of 20th-century geopolitics.
German historian and journalist Schlögel casts a discerning eye on the things that surrounded the Soviet Union and its people.
Who knew that, apart from his experiments with dogs, Ivan Pavlov wrote a preface concerning nutrition for a bestselling Soviet cookbook? That’s one of just many oddments Schlögel assembles in this utterly absorbing tour through the material goods that defined the Soviet era, from pulpy wrapping paper to the medals veterans wore, from canned goods to perfume and tchotchkes and everything in between. All were on display immediately after the Soviet Union collapsed, as the author notes empathetically: “Things that had previously been carefully stored and preserved until the end of people’s lives—distinctions, work records, diplomas and even medals—all find themselves up for sale in the flea market once material needs have become sufficiently pressing and the sense of reverence has evaporated.” Sometimes people got rid of these things less for financial need than to discard a failed system, but even so, there’s a nostalgia at work in a marketplace that has shifted from the streets to shopping malls and department stores that could be anywhere in the world. Schlögel is particularly fascinated by old signs for such things as the butcher shop, which may have had the barest range of offerings, something that “is hard to describe…when you come from a world where there are always dozens of different sorts of meat and sausage.” If there was an abundance of anything in the Soviet Union, it was of aspirational rhetoric: A fascinating case is the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, which argued that alphabetical order was a feeble artifact of the ruling class of old, to be swept aside for a new way of arranging knowledge. (Alphabetical order was eventually restored.) More ominous, as Schlögel unveils, was its editors’ insistence that there's no such thing as “objective facts,” a foreshadowing of today’s post-truth world.
A superb blend of social history and material culture, essential for students of 20th-century geopolitics.Pub Date: March 14, 2023
ISBN: 978-0-691-18374-9
Page Count: 880
Publisher: Princeton Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 10, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2022
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
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.
A former New York City dancer reflects on her zesty heyday in the 1970s.
Discovered on a Manhattan street in 2020 and introduced on Stanton’s Humans of New York Instagram page, Johnson, then 76, shares her dynamic history as a “fiercely independent” Black burlesque dancer who used the stage name Tanqueray and became a celebrated fixture in midtown adult theaters. “I was the only black girl making white girl money,” she boasts, telling a vibrant story about sex and struggle in a bygone era. Frank and unapologetic, Johnson vividly captures aspects of her former life as a stage seductress shimmying to blues tracks during 18-minute sets or sewing lingerie for plus-sized dancers. Though her work was far from the Broadway shows she dreamed about, it eventually became all about the nightly hustle to simply survive. Her anecdotes are humorous, heartfelt, and supremely captivating, recounted with the passion of a true survivor and the acerbic wit of a weathered, street-wise New Yorker. She shares stories of growing up in an abusive household in Albany in the 1940s, a teenage pregnancy, and prison time for robbery as nonchalantly as she recalls selling rhinestone G-strings to prostitutes to make them sparkle in the headlights of passing cars. Complemented by an array of revealing personal photographs, the narrative alternates between heartfelt nostalgia about the seedier side of Manhattan’s go-go scene and funny quips about her unconventional stage performances. Encounters with a variety of hardworking dancers, drag queens, and pimps, plus an account of the complexities of a first love with a drug-addled hustler, fill out the memoir with personality and candor. With a narrative assist from Stanton, the result is a consistently titillating and often moving story of human struggle as well as an insider glimpse into the days when Times Square was considered the Big Apple’s gloriously unpolished underbelly. The book also includes Yee’s lush watercolor illustrations.
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.Pub Date: July 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-27827-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2022
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