A monotonous, jargon-riddled analysis of stone, bone, and burial remains left behind by the ancient Irish, telling us almost nothing about how these long-dead people lived. Irish archaeologist Flanagan divides his account into two parts: first, he examines in meticulous detail the excavated artifacts of the pre-Celtic Irish and second, he attempts to use this archaeological evidence to explore the social, economic, and political systems of these prehistoric people. Hence, the book begins with an exhaustive, and exhausting, discussion of stone artifacts from the Mesolithic Period (8000—4000 b.c.). Flanagan’s narrative, brimming with technical terms left unexplained, is sure to confuse and frustrate the nonarchaeologist reader. This, for example, is how he describes a Neolithic Period (4000—2000 b.c.) tomb discovered in County Tipperary: “Here a two-chambered gallery set in a rather U-shaped cairn, rivetted with a combination of non-contiguous orthostats and dry-stone walling, was further embellished by a series of thirty-four posts set to echo the outline of the rivetment.” Later, Flanagan refers to artifacts made of felsite, which he unhelpfully defines as “a devitrified volcanic glass.” Flanagan himself seems to understand the limited value of these artifacts in explaining the daily lives of the ancient Irish. “They are simply dissociated artefacts and reveal little about their makers and users,” he says, “how do we persuade them to tell their stories?” Unfortunately, Flanagan provides very few answers. The existence of tombs, for instance, indicates they may have had religious beliefs. The requirements of large-scale agriculture suggests they had some system of government. Bronze Age swords possibly indicate the concept of war. Faced with incomplete evidence, Flanagan simply isn’t able to provide anything more definitive. The difficult early chapters don’t result in any payoff at the end; surely a disappointing volume for the general reader interested in more than inarticulate rocks and bones. (300 b&w illustrations)
Pub Date: March 8, 1999
ISBN: 0-312-21881-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1999
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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