An entertainingly over-stocked historical digest of life during London’s liveliest decade of the 17th century, 1660—70. Picard, a lawyer at Gray’s Inn and an amateur historian, is uninterested in writing a revisionist work of that most uncharacteristic era in English history, which takes in the post—Civil War return of the monarchy, the growth of Great Britain’s mercantile empire, and the devastating Great Fire, out of which modern London arose. Picard’s book is essentially lively social history with a materialist slant and skirts complicated politics to devote itself to a minute examination of mundane life from every angle. Picard gathers evidence and testimony to create something like the contemporary grab-bag almanacs, throwing in an exceptional range of information under headings for education, sex, clothing, housework, cooking, city planning, and entertainment, just to name a few. Sources naturally include the diary of Samuel Pepys, that of the underrated John Evelyn, and the eclectic biographical briefs of John Aubery. Picard also unearths small treasuries of first-hand data: the travelogue of Cosmo, the young grand duke of Tuscany, who took in London in a reverse of the Grand Tour; educator Hannah Wolley’s “conduct” books like The Accomplish’d Lady’s Delight, a Cooking Book, and Guide to the Female Sex; heraldic scholar Randle Holme’s Academy of Armory, whose descriptions of anything appearing on a coat of arms reads like the era’s Sears catalogue; and the Calendar of State Papers Domestic, a cornucopia of civil papers, e.g., rewards for stray cows, plans for waterworks, petitions on behalf of brothels, and requests to —Sam. Pepys— for naval supplies. Beyond her assiduous research, Picard displays remarkable sympathy for those who lived in the Restoration era, getting under the age’s skin even to the extent of imagining wearing stays. Picard’s engaging survey energetically rummages through the attic of London’s colorful past. (24 pages b&w illustrations, not seen)
Pub Date: May 27, 1998
ISBN: 0-312-18659-2
Page Count: 330
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1998
A horde-pleaser, well-written and full of surprises.
“The Mongols swept across the globe as conquerors,” writes the appreciative pop anthropologist-historian Weatherford (The History of Money, 1997, etc.), “but also as civilization’s unrivaled cultural carriers.”
No business-secrets fluffery here, though Weatherford does credit Genghis Khan and company for seeking “not merely to conquer the world but to impose a global order based on free trade, a single international law, and a universal alphabet with which to write all the languages of the world.” Not that the world was necessarily appreciative: the Mongols were renowned for, well, intemperance in war and peace, even if Weatherford does go rather lightly on the atrocities-and-butchery front. Instead, he accentuates the positive changes the Mongols, led by a visionary Genghis Khan, brought to the vast territories they conquered, if ever so briefly: the use of carpets, noodles, tea, playing cards, lemons, carrots, fabrics, and even a few words, including the cheer hurray. (Oh, yes, and flame throwers, too.) Why, then, has history remembered Genghis and his comrades so ungenerously? Whereas Geoffrey Chaucer considered him “so excellent a lord in all things,” Genghis is a byword for all that is savage and terrible; the word “Mongol” figures, thanks to the pseudoscientific racism of the 19th century, as the root of “mongoloid,” a condition attributed to genetic throwbacks to seed sown by Mongol invaders during their decades of ravaging Europe. (Bad science, that, but Dr. Down’s son himself argued that imbeciles “derived from an earlier form of the Mongol stock and should be considered more ‘pre-human, rather than human.’ ”) Weatherford’s lively analysis restores the Mongols’ reputation, and it takes some wonderful learned detours—into, for instance, the history of the so-called Secret History of the Mongols, which the Nazis raced to translate in the hope that it would help them conquer Russia, as only the Mongols had succeeded in doing.
A horde-pleaser, well-written and full of surprises.Pub Date: March 2, 2004
ISBN: 0-609-61062-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2003
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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