A deeply considered look at women and power in the late Roman age.
Wife of one emperor, mother of another, Empress Livia proves a powerful tool with which to amplify on the “dog days” of the Roman Empire.
British journalist Dennison (The Last Princess: The Devoted Life of Queen Victoria’s Youngest Daughter, 2008, etc.) deftly sifts the historical record for a portrait of a woman in the right place at the right time. Livia was the daughter of Marcus Livius Drusus Claudianus, who belonged to Rome’s most distinguished senatorial families but backed the wrong side after Julius Caesar’s assassination and was eliminated during the Second Triumvirate’s Proscription. Nonetheless, Livia had been married off at age 15 to “turncoat” Tiberius Claudius Nero, had two sons quickly by him, living often in exile, before her affair with Octavian, the youngest of the Triumvirate, precipitated a hasty divorce and remarriage. Thus Livia allied herself with Rome’s first citizen, and their marriage lasted more than 50 years. Although she had clear ambitions for her two sons, Tiberius and Drusus, Livia herself was not allowed to share power as Octavian’s star rose over the next half-century—although “access…was arguably Livia’s true patrimony.” The first order of business was the necessity of defeating Mark Antony, who had broken off and allied himself with Cleopatra. After Actium, Octavian assumed the name “Augustus,” revered one, and gradually Livia also became an archetype by imperial propaganda, becoming sacrosanct, as depicted in public statues—faithful, steadfast and chaste, as opposed to Cleopatra’s exotic, promiscuous, beguiling depictions. Her childlessness with Octavian might have been troubling, had Octavian not truly loved Livia. He finally adopted Tiberius as his son, and Livia ultimately secured Tiberius’s inheritance of power upon Octavian’s death in 14 CE. Dennison does a nice job of defending this fascinating character from “demonization” through the centuries, and knowledgeably considers many facets of Roman history, including religion, the place of women and children, family life and iconography.
A deeply considered look at women and power in the late Roman age.Pub Date: Jan. 4, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-312-65864-9
Page Count: 336
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Oct. 14, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2010
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
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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