A stirring story of women strong enough to both embrace and defy tradition.
The British historian examines the remarkable transition of India’s female royalty from fairy-tale queens to activist powerbrokers as colonial fiefdoms merged into Asia’s largest democracy.
Moore (The Thieves’ Opera, 1998, etc.) focuses on three ancient families, the Gaekwads, Narayans and Jaipurs, who ruled over separate Indian states endowed under British colonial rule as the 19th century closed with foreboding. Moore sets the stage meticulously, stressing the advantage British overlords sought by fostering traditional administration and all its observances, so as long trade revenues flowed unfettered to London. Actual policies, of course, were strictly dictated in a kind of offstage whisper, and Indian royal families had no choice but to carry on with the pageant. For the queens, including Chimnabai II of Baroda (born ca. 1872 as Garabai Ghatge), traditional burdens of their role included the concept of purdah: no maharani should be seen by anyone other than her husband or necessary body servants. They lived literally screened off from the world, even at public functions. Devotion to lord and master also included the implied obligation not to outlive him; failing that, widows were expected to climb aboard his funeral pyre in sati—an act, Moore relates, often undertaken as culmination of the union and not under duress. From this setting, the author moves on to Chimnabai’s impulsive daughter, Indira, who defied her parents by actually marrying for love, and thence to Indira’s daughter, Ayesha, who escaped purdah with finality by hobnobbing with the likes of Jackie Kennedy, running successfully for Parliament in 1962, and becoming a lifelong opponent of the populist Indira Gandhi. Through it all, a gathering curse seemed to envelop the once-beloved maharajahs, who regularly fell from polo ponies or succumbed to generic alcoholism, leaving their magnificent ancient palaces empty and crumbling, with a little help from Mrs. Gandhi’s rapacious tax collectors,.
A stirring story of women strong enough to both embrace and defy tradition.Pub Date: Jan. 3, 2005
ISBN: 0-670-03368-5
Page Count: 350
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2004
A clear, useful guide through the current chaotic political landscape.
A sharp explanation of how American politics has become so discordant.
Journalist Klein, co-founder of Vox, formerly of the Washington Post, MSNBC, and Bloomberg, reminds readers that political commentators in the 1950s and ’60s denounced Republicans and Democrats as “tweedledum and tweedledee.” With liberals and conservatives in both parties, they complained, voters lacked a true choice. The author suspects that race played a role, and he capably shows us why and how. For a century after the Civil War, former Confederate states, obsessed with keeping blacks powerless, elected a congressional bloc that “kept the Democratic party less liberal than it otherwise would’ve been, the Republican Party congressionally weaker than it otherwise would’ve been, and stopped the parties from sorting themselves around the deepest political cleavage of the age.” Following the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, many white Southern Democrats became Republicans, and the parties turned consistently liberal and conservative. Given a “true choice,” Klein maintains, voters discarded ideology in favor of “identity politics.” Americans, like all humans, cherish their “tribe” and distrust outsiders. Identity was once a preoccupation of minorities, but it has recently attracted white activists and poisoned the national discourse. The author deplores the decline of mass media (network TV, daily newspapers), which could not offend a large audience, and the rise of niche media and internet sites, which tell a small audience only what they want to hear. American observers often joke about European nations that have many parties who vote in lock step. In fact, such parties cooperate to pass legislation. America is the sole system with only two parties, both of which are convinced that the other is not only incompetent (a traditional accusation), but a danger to the nation. So far, calls for drastic action to prevent the apocalypse are confined to social media, fringe activists, and the rhetoric of Trump supporters. Fortunately—according to Klein—Trump is lazy, but future presidents may be more savvy. The author does not conclude this deeply insightful, if dispiriting, analysis by proposing a solution.
A clear, useful guide through the current chaotic political landscape.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4767-0032-8
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
Aly delivers again, this time expanding his lens outside of Germany to offer further revelations about the Holocaust.
The award-winning German author dips into his vast archive of resources to produce a major work on anti-Semitism.
Anti-Semitism has been around for centuries. Though occasionally somewhat dormant, usually during times of fiscal strength and political peace, it always returns to rear its ugly head, each time spelling disaster for Jewish populations. Aly—the highly respected historian of the Holocaust who won the 2007 Jewish Book Award for his excellent Hitler's Beneficiaries—examines the period of 1880 to 1945 to show how, why, and in what forms anti-Semitism increased sufficiently to support the Nazi concept of the Final Solution. The author ranges widely across Europe, examining Russia, Romania, France, and Greece as well as Lithuania, Poland, Ukraine, and other less-explored locales. “There is no way we can comprehend the pace and extent of the Holocaust,” writes Aly, “if we restrict our focus to the German centers of command.” While Jews were restricted from many jobs, they applied all their strength and determination to areas that were permitted, such as pharmacology, medicine, and journalism. Governmental actions began with bans on Jews serving municipalities and joining trade associations, and they also experienced limited access to education. After World War I, the concept of self-determination morphed into a brand of nationalism and misguided “racial theory” that led to increased animosity and violence. “Insofar as gentiles in the first half of the twentieth century pressed for Jews to be partially or completely stripped of their civil rights or insisted they be shipped off to somewhere outside Europe,” writes the author, “they were motivated by [an] obsessive anxiety: the fear of a supposedly overwhelming power and the real intellectual and economic agility of a small, precisely delineable ‘foreign’ group.” Though the gruesome subject and detail are sometimes tough to swallow, readers should forge ahead, relishing the author’s incredible research and singular scholarship.
Aly delivers again, this time expanding his lens outside of Germany to offer further revelations about the Holocaust.Pub Date: April 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-17017-0
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Metropolitan/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Jan. 25, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
GENERAL HISTORY | WORLD | HOLOCAUST | JEWISH | HISTORY
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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