Persuasive rehabilitation of Catherine, not as a nice woman, but as a shrewd leader who did what she had to.
Scholarly but lively biography of the Italian-born queen who ruled France as regent during 30 years of bitter religious warfare.
Catherine (1519–89) was only 14 when she married the French Dauphin (crowned Henri II in 1547), but she’d already been very nearly murdered by opponents of her cousin Pope Clement VII. Being scorned by the French nobility as an Italian upstart merely sharpened the political skills of a young woman who wasn’t pretty but had learned how to be charming—and how to keep her thoughts to herself. Yet Catherine’s centuries-old reputation as a murderous schemer is undeserved, argues first-time biographer Frieda: ruthless, yes, but no more brutal than anyone else embroiled in the struggle between Catholics and Protestants that racked 16th-century France and threatened to destroy the Valois dynasty. Henri’s untimely death in 1459 left Catherine with a ten-year-old son on the throne; two more underage sons would inherit the crown while she checked the ambitions of the powerful Guise and Bourbon families. Yes, Frieda acknowledges, Catherine did plan the 1572 assassination of leading French Huguenots that has tarnished her name ever since, but the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre was “intended as a relatively small-scale surgical operation,” though the passions of the Catholic masses turned it into a full-scale bloodbath. In fact, Frieda demonstrates, Catherine was a religious moderate who repeatedly offered toleration to the Huguenots until she became convinced they weren’t just heretics but traitors. Seven months after Catherine’s death, fellow pragmatist Henri de Bourbon abjured Protestantism and ascended the throne and, with the 1598 Edict of Nantes, ended the nation’s fratricidal conflict. If any of her sons had been that adept, Catherine would be remembered as a patron of the arts, enthusiastic huntswoman, and thrower of great parties instead of “the Black Queen” of St. Bartholomew’s Day.
Persuasive rehabilitation of Catherine, not as a nice woman, but as a shrewd leader who did what she had to.Pub Date: Jan. 21, 2005
ISBN: 0-06-074492-8
Page Count: 464
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2004
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and...
A dense, absorbing investigation into the medical community's exploitation of a dying woman and her family's struggle to salvage truth and dignity decades later.
In a well-paced, vibrant narrative, Popular Science contributor and Culture Dish blogger Skloot (Creative Writing/Univ. of Memphis) demonstrates that for every human cell put under a microscope, a complex life story is inexorably attached, to which doctors, researchers and laboratories have often been woefully insensitive and unaccountable. In 1951, Henrietta Lacks, an African-American mother of five, was diagnosed with what proved to be a fatal form of cervical cancer. At Johns Hopkins, the doctors harvested cells from her cervix without her permission and distributed them to labs around the globe, where they were multiplied and used for a diverse array of treatments. Known as HeLa cells, they became one of the world's most ubiquitous sources for medical research of everything from hormones, steroids and vitamins to gene mapping, in vitro fertilization, even the polio vaccine—all without the knowledge, must less consent, of the Lacks family. Skloot spent a decade interviewing every relative of Lacks she could find, excavating difficult memories and long-simmering outrage that had lay dormant since their loved one's sorrowful demise. Equal parts intimate biography and brutal clinical reportage, Skloot's graceful narrative adeptly navigates the wrenching Lack family recollections and the sobering, overarching realities of poverty and pre–civil-rights racism. The author's style is matched by a methodical scientific rigor and manifest expertise in the field.
Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and Petri dish politics.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4000-5217-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
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