A solid examination of how the Viking story continues to be told, embellished, and contested.
A lucid survey of Viking lore, archaeological finds, and modern interpretations.
Whittock has published numerous educational books, including studies of Viking and Anglo-Saxon history. In his latest, he focuses on 11th-century Viking settlements in North America and how the Viking legacy—in both fact and myth—continues to influence the U.S. today. The author demonstrates that medieval Norse sagas and modern archaeology have surprising confluences, though both remain open to debate and vulnerable to misuse. In the process, he assays claims for a Viking presence beyond the archaeological evidence from Newfoundland and the Canadian Arctic and tries to pinpoint the much-contested location of Vinland, possibly as far south as New England. Whittock investigates many bogus claims of Viking presence and artifacts, not least in the heavily Scandinavian U.S. Midwest. The author also parses the tug-of-war among the Vikings, Columbus, and the Mayflower Pilgrims for the mantle of “first Americans,” while reminding us that it’s nonsensical; only Native North American peoples hold that distinction. The book is authoritative in its details and engagingly written, and it’s unsettling in its examination of how Viking symbology is being co-opted, distorted, and perverted by white supremacist and other far-right extremist groups—some of it on display during the Jan. 6 insurrection. Especially topical from a European standpoint is the subject’s connection to the knotty roots of nationhood that underlie Russian nationalist claims denying Ukraine’s legitimacy as an independent nation. Whittock concludes with a survey of the enduring fascination with Viking lore in popular culture and in product marketing. If the book suffers from any shortcoming, it’s unnecessary reiteration. Though illustrative to a point, there is some padding here, with perhaps too much space devoted to the particulars of Viking-inspired comic books, movies, and TV series. Those are interesting subjects, but prove to be a diversion from the more scholarly content.
A solid examination of how the Viking story continues to be told, embellished, and contested.Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2023
ISBN: 9781639365357
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Pegasus
Review Posted Online: July 28, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2023
HISTORY | MILITARY | EXPEDITIONS | WORLD | GENERAL HISTORY
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
He came home eventually, to do the “Survivor Shuffle” and miss Vietnam acutely, and he writes with a fierce, tight...
“Vietnam, man. Bomb ’em and feed ’em, bomb ’em and feed ’em”—a chopper pilot summarized the war strategy for Herr.
And with Herr’s belated volume of unfiled dispatches from the front, the awareness grows that this war—like no other since WWI—continues to produce a rich lode of literature, part litany, part exorcism, part macabre nostalgia. Like his buddies Scan Flynn and Dana Stone—later MIA in Cambodia—Herr was a correspondent with a license to see more than just a single mud hole. Using the “Airmobility” of the helicopters, he hopscotched the country from Hue to Danang to the DMZ to Saigon (“the subtle city war inside the war” where corruption stank like musk oil). He was at Hue during the battle that reduced the old Imperial capital to rubble, at Khe Sanh when the grunts’ expectations of another Alamo were running high. Between mortar shells and body bags he reflected on the mysterious smiles of the blank-eyed soldiers, smiles that said “I’ll tell you why I’m smiling, but it will make you crazy.” And Herr, who is full of twisted, hidden ironies, is all wrapped up in the craziness of the war, enthralled by the limitless “variety of deaths and mutilations the war offered,” and by the awful “cheer-crazed” language of the official communiques which always reported spirits high, weather fine. He knew, and his buddies knew, that this kind of reportage was “psychotic vaudeville”—though not for a moment would he deny the harsh glamour of being a working war correspondent.
He came home eventually, to do the “Survivor Shuffle” and miss Vietnam acutely, and he writes with a fierce, tight insistence that never lets go.Pub Date: Nov. 8, 1977
ISBN: 0679735259
Page Count: 276
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Oct. 11, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1977
BOOK REVIEW
The Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist (1900–45) collected his work from WWII in two bestselling volumes, this second published in 1944, a year before Pyle was killed by a sniper’s bullet on Okinawa. In his fine introduction to this new edition, G. Kurt Piehler (History/Univ. of Tennessee at Knoxville) celebrates Pyle’s “dense, descriptive style” and his unusual feel for the quotidian GI experience—a personal and human side to war left out of reporting on generals and their strategies. Though Piehler’s reminder about wartime censorship seems beside the point, his biographical context—Pyle was escaping a troubled marriage—is valuable. Kirkus, at the time, noted the hoopla over Pyle (Pulitzer, hugely popular syndicated column, BOMC hype) and decided it was all worth it: “the book doesn’t let the reader down.” Pyle, of course, captures “the human qualities” of men in combat, but he also provides “an extraordinary sense of the scope of the European war fronts, the variety of services involved, the men and their officers.” Despite Piehler’s current argument that Pyle ignored much of the war (particularly the seamier stuff), Kirkus in 1944 marveled at how much he was able to cover. Back then, we thought, “here’s a book that needs no selling.” Nowadays, a firm push might be needed to renew interest in this classic of modern journalism.
Pub Date: April 26, 2001
ISBN: 0-8032-8768-2
Page Count: 513
Publisher: Univ. of Nebraska
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2001
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