There is much to absorb in this significant scholarly achievement, which effectively integrates natural, social, and...
A view of the fall of Rome from a different angle, looking beyond military and social collapse to man’s relationship to the environment.
“The fate of Rome might serve to remind us that nature is cunning and capricious. The deep power of evolution can change the world in a mere moment. Surprise and paradox lurk in the heart of progress,” writes Harper (Classics and Letters/Univ. of Oklahoma; From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity, 2013, etc.) in this astute “account of how one of history’s most conspicuous civilizations found its dominion over nature less certain than it had ever dreamed.” The empire’s very strength, built on travel, trade, and migration, also enabled the spread of tuberculosis, leprosy, smallpox, plague, and other diseases. The kindness of the climate played a large part in the expansion of the empire, especially agriculturally, but the close proximity of humans and animals brought new parasites and diseases. Furthermore, the high level and density of urbanization in over 1,000 cities facilitated the widespread transmission of germs. The empire survived a pandemic in the age of Marcus Aurelius, then a mix of drought, pestilence, and political upheaval called the “Crisis of the Third Century,” or the first fall of Rome, beginning in the 230s. At that time of political upheaval, suddenly the Aurelian walls rose around Rome, coins were debased, and fear enabled the rise of Christianity. Though Rome rebuilt and recovered, more was to come as the climate turned. The empire suffered drought in the southern Mediterranean, especially Rome’s breadbasket, Egypt, and the Plague of Cyprian (250-270) spread throughout the empire. Among many other intriguing hypotheses, Harper proposes that it was Ebola; regardless, it devastated the population and invited invasion by Goths, Persians, Franks, and others at the weakened borders.
There is much to absorb in this significant scholarly achievement, which effectively integrates natural, social, and humanistic sciences to show how the fall of the empire caused the decline of Rome.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-691-16683-4
Page Count: 440
Publisher: Princeton Univ.
Review Posted Online: Aug. 27, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2017
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
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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