Absorbing work by a strong, capable writer and teacher who imparts his vast knowledge with great style and clarity.
A comprehensive and accessible study of two great ancient cities that finally came to fatal blows.
As a scholar of both Roman and Jewish studies, Goodman (Jewish Studies/Oxford) displays impressive depth in his fleshing out of the two cities in terms of their sense of identities, communities, lifestyles, government, politics and religion. Relying on the writings of the “main witness” Josephus, a priest in Jerusalem who eventually turned sides, Goodman demonstrates how Roman rule of Judea was relatively benign since Herod was appointed king in 40 BCE and devoted himself to rebuilding Jerusalem and embellishing his Temple. Both cultures adapted to the Hellenism pervasive in the area since Alexander’s conquest, and both were fairly tolerant of diversity. The first signs of trouble, writes Goodman, were mainly isolated skirmishes “largely internal to Jewish society rather than symptoms of widespread resentment to Roman rule.” After a series of venal Roman governors, the Captain of the Temple, Eleazar son of Ananias, persuaded his fellow priests in 66 CE to stop offering sacrifices made to the Jewish God on behalf of the Roman emperor—an assertion of war by the ruling elite. Roman reaction was swift and brutal over the next four years, culminating in Emperor Vespasian’s instructions to his son Titus to squelch the rebellion at any cost. With the razing of the Temple in the summer of 70 CE, 60 years of rebellion followed, and Hadrian’s new Roman city Aelia Capitolina was established on the site. Goodman pursues the growth of the Church in the wake of Constantine’s embrace of Christianity, which changed the nature of the region and pushed Jews increasingly to the margins. He also devotes a fine epilogue to the origins of anti-Semitism.
Absorbing work by a strong, capable writer and teacher who imparts his vast knowledge with great style and clarity.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-375-41185-4
Page Count: 624
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2007
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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 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
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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