A spirited, informative history of a fascinating fiber.
A hair-follicle scientist offers an edifying look at the biology, physiology, and history of hair.
A former professor of pathology and dermatology at Yale University School of Medicine and former director of skin biology for Johnson & Johnson, Stenn brings considerable expertise and lively curiosity to this wide-ranging inquiry into what hair is, how it evolved, and what it has meant culturally, personally, and economically. Hair, notes the author, is present on all skin surfaces, although on humans, much of it is hardly noticeable. Even an individual who appears to be bald has “frightfully small, only microscopically visible” hair follicles and hair shafts. Scientists disagree regarding why humans lost the dense hair cover that characterized earlier hominids; the author believes less density evolved “to protect their uniquely temperature-sensitive brain” and dissipate heat through sweat glands. Besides human hair, Stenn considers the significance of fur, which functioned as protective covering for early humans living in cold climates. Indigenous North Americans understood that late autumn was the best time to collect beaver skins because the animal’s fur was thickest in anticipation of winter. In 16th-century Europe, beaver hats were so coveted that trappers exhausted the beaver populations of Northern European forests, turning energetically to the New World, where fur trading became economically beneficial to native peoples. In the 14th century, England was renowned for wool production, which continued as the nation’s most profitable export for many centuries. Stenn investigates some arcane practices involving hair, notably the hair-hang act, where a female acrobat is suspended from rafters by a shank of hair, a feat made possible because of hair’s amazing tensile strength. Other uses for hair include artists’ brushes; violinists’ bows, which use about 130 to 150 straight shafts, constructed in a painstaking process; and as forensic evidence for solving crimes.
A spirited, informative history of a fascinating fiber.Pub Date: Feb. 15, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-60598-955-6
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Pegasus
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2015
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
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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