An authoritative and sympathetic collective biography.
Renaissance scholar Quilligan closely examines the relationships among four 16th-century rulers—Mary Tudor, Elizabeth I, Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, and Catherine de’ Medici—seeking to revise the “misogynist narrative” that placed them in “jealous and warlike opposition” to one another. With meticulous attention to the letters and gifts they exchanged, Quilligan argues that the women nurtured a culture of mutual respect based on their family ties and sense of their “shared nature of power.” Their lives were inextricably intertwined: Mary Tudor and Elizabeth were half sisters and religious antagonists; Mary Stuart was their cousin once removed; Catherine, though not a queen, was Mary Stuart’s mother-in-law and “ruled as mother of three different kings.” Considering Elizabeth’s relationship with Mary Stuart, Quilligan asserts that the Protestant and Catholic queens evinced “an essentially similar, tolerant Christianity”—unlike Catholic Mary Tudor, who, during the first three years of her reign, “burned heretics alive, many of them common people but some of them Anglican bishops and archbishops.” Elizabeth accepted Mary Stuart’s request to be godmother to her son James and sent a solid gold baptismal font upon the boy’s birth, symbolizing the queens’ mutual desire for “unity and toleration.” Still, Mary soon melted it down to fund her troops. Other gifts among the women included gems, silver, fine embroidery, books, and tapestries; as Quilligan notes, many of Elizabeth’s 800 pieces of jewelry were gifts from women, not necessarily family. Elizabeth and her cousin never met, even when Mary Stuart, perceived by Elizabeth’s courtiers as a threat, lived for more than 18 years under house arrest in England. When Mary Stuart was beheaded in 1587, Elizabeth, furious, claimed the execution was a “miserable accident” about which she had known nothing. At times, it is difficult to separate the rulers’ political exigency from their familial loyalty, but the book is a useful addition to the literature on European royalty.
An authoritative and sympathetic collective biography.Pub Date: Oct. 12, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-63149-796-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Liveright/Norton
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021
Gibbins combines historical knowledge with a sense of adventure, making this book a highly enjoyable package.
A popular novelist turns his hand to historical writing, focusing on what shipwrecks can tell us.
There’s something inherently romantic about shipwrecks: the mystery, the drama of disaster, the prospect of lost treasure. Gibbins, who’s found acclaim as an author of historical fiction, has long been fascinated with them, and his expertise in both archaeology and diving provides a tone of solid authority to his latest book. The author has personally dived on more than half the wrecks discussed in the book; for the other cases, he draws on historical records and accounts. “Wrecks offer special access to history at all…levels,” he writes. “Unlike many archaeological sites, a wreck represents a single event in which most of the objects were in use at that time and can often be closely dated. What might seem hazy in other evidence can be sharply defined, pointing the way to fresh insights.” Gibbins covers a wide variety of cases, including wrecks dating from classical times; a ship torpedoed during World War II; a Viking longship; a ship of Arab origin that foundered in Indonesian waters in the ninth century; the Mary Rose, the flagship of the navy of Henry VIII; and an Arctic exploring vessel, the Terror (for more on that ship, read Paul Watson’s Ice Ghost). Underwater excavation often produces valuable artifacts, but Gibbins is equally interested in the material that reveals the society of the time. He does an excellent job of placing each wreck within a broader context, as well as examining the human elements of the story. The result is a book that will appeal to readers with an interest in maritime history and who would enjoy a different, and enlightening, perspective.
Gibbins combines historical knowledge with a sense of adventure, making this book a highly enjoyable package.Pub Date: April 2, 2024
ISBN: 9781250325372
Page Count: 304
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 28, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Chronology, photographs and personal knowledge combine to make a memorable commemorative presentation.
Jackie Kennedy's secret service agent Hill and co-author McCubbin team up for a follow-up to Mrs. Kennedy and Me (2012) in this well-illustrated narrative of those five days 50 years ago when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated.
Since Hill was part of the secret service detail assigned to protect the president and his wife, his firsthand account of those days is unique. The chronological approach, beginning before the presidential party even left the nation's capital on Nov. 21, shows Kennedy promoting his “New Frontier” policy and how he was received by Texans in San Antonio, Houston and Fort Worth before his arrival in Dallas. A crowd of more than 8,000 greeted him in Houston, and thousands more waited until 11 p.m. to greet the president at his stop in Fort Worth. Photographs highlight the enthusiasm of those who came to the airports and the routes the motorcades followed on that first day. At the Houston Coliseum, Kennedy addressed the leaders who were building NASA for the planned moon landing he had initiated. Hostile ads and flyers circulated in Dallas, but the president and his wife stopped their motorcade to respond to schoolchildren who held up a banner asking the president to stop and shake their hands. Hill recounts how, after Lee Harvey Oswald fired his fatal shots, he jumped onto the back of the presidential limousine. He was present at Parkland Hospital, where the president was declared dead, and on the plane when Lyndon Johnson was sworn in. Hill also reports the funeral procession and the ceremony in Arlington National Cemetery. “[Kennedy] would have not wanted his legacy, fifty years later, to be a debate about the details of his death,” writes the author. “Rather, he would want people to focus on the values and ideals in which he so passionately believed.”
Chronology, photographs and personal knowledge combine to make a memorable commemorative presentation.Pub Date: Nov. 19, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4767-3149-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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