by Mark Adams ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 10, 2015
Fact or fiction, Atlantis, as the author ably demonstrates, still has the power to enthrall inquiring minds.
Fun, enthusiastic exploration of the fabled lost city of Atlantis and the fascinating group of diverse personalities who have dedicated their lives to proving its existence.
In the world of comics, Atlantis is a fantastical underwater city where blue-skinned denizens thrive deep below the ocean waves. But according to Plato, Atlantis was once a very real civilization, which, despite its unparalleled greatness, ultimately fell prey to a catastrophic natural disaster and was erased from the face of the Earth. Plato wrote about Atlantis, although cryptically, in two separate works following the completion of The Republic. More than 2,000 years later, the great philosopher’s words continue to resonate, spurring wide-eyed explorers to fan out across the globe searching for antiquity’s mysterious “Sea People.” Some see Atlantis and its telltale concurrent rings on the coast of Morocco. Some see it on the island of Malta. Still others insist that Santorini, Greece, is the spot. Adams (Turn Right at Machu Picchu: Rediscovering the Lost City One Step at a Time, 2011, etc.) isn’t quite sure about any of the possible locales or even if Plato was being literal and not just figurative when he wrote about the mighty kings and their awe-inspiring navy. However, it’s clear that the author, a serious journalist who nevertheless grew up on Leonard Nimoy’s In Search of… TV series, wants to believe that mighty Atlantis is indeed waiting to be rediscovered. The collision between Adams’ youthful zeal and journalistic sensibilities provides an arresting dichotomy to an absorbing search. If Plato himself remains nebulous, how reliable are the amateur sleuths and part-time archaeologists who insist that Atlantis must exist as something more than mere allegory? The uncertainty kept Adams off-balance throughout the quest, but it never dampened his spirit of adventure.
Fact or fiction, Atlantis, as the author ably demonstrates, still has the power to enthrall inquiring minds.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0525953708
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2014
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by David Grann ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 18, 2017
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
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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 Yorker staff 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
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by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
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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by Elie Wiesel ; translated by Marion Wiesel
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