Here's material for many a budding picaresque romance. It's an expedition in time, educational and entertaining, and more...
Londoner Waller offers a journey to another age and another London.
The year 1700 was not a particularly special one in history, but in 1700, London was the greatest metropolis of its day, teeming with more than half-a-million busy urbanites. Wren redefined the city skyline after the great fire, but he is scarcely mentioned. William and Mary reigned, but they matter not all in this story: this is a social history, in which we meet merchants and apothecaries, fops, footpads, highwaymen, pickpockets, prostitutes and wig snatchers—in a time when London had no central police force, houses had no numbers, and no one had knickers to show off on stage. Regular entertainment was largely in the form of public executions and other blood sports. There were cock fights, bear-baiting, and general fisticuffs, Bedlam was considered a fun place to visit, and coffeehouses and taverns were busy. But leisure was scarce for the majority and life was short for most. Few children survived to adulthood. Disease was treated by dubious means and by benighted practitioners. Decent sanitation was unknown (which, incidentally, caused the practice of ladies leaving dinner tables to the men). Waller investigates life and death and the travails of childbirth, as well as comestibles and drink, the regulation of the home, and the dictates of fashion (including the price of worsteds and silks) in 1700. Also considered are rampant crime and fierce punishment, as well as the everyday lives of the poor, the rich, and the `middling people.` To tell the story she draws copiously from contemporary bills of mortality, diaries, wills, letters, news reports and guidebooks—with the added delight of original eccentric orthography. Clearly speaking to posterity, Swift, Pepys, and Defoe appear frequently. Ultimately, despite different values and habits, these Londoners of three centuries ago, on the cusp of modern times, are no strangers to us.
Here's material for many a budding picaresque romance. It's an expedition in time, educational and entertaining, and more edifying, surely, than a visit to Bedlam.Pub Date: May 10, 2000
ISBN: 1-56858-164-5
Page Count: 326
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2000
HISTORY | MODERN | WORLD | GENERAL HISTORY
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.
Rootin’-tootin’ history of the dry-gulchers, horn-swogglers, and outright killers who populated the Wild West’s wildest city in the late 19th century.
The stories of Wyatt Earp and company, the shootout at the O.K. Corral, and Geronimo and the Apache Wars are all well known. Clavin, who has written books on Dodge City and Wild Bill Hickok, delivers a solid narrative that usefully links significant events—making allies of white enemies, for instance, in facing down the Apache threat, rustling from Mexico, and other ethnically charged circumstances. The author is a touch revisionist, in the modern fashion, in noting that the Earps and Clantons weren’t as bloodthirsty as popular culture has made them out to be. For example, Wyatt and Bat Masterson “took the ‘peace’ in peace officer literally and knew that the way to tame the notorious town was not to outkill the bad guys but to intimidate them, sometimes with the help of a gun barrel to the skull.” Indeed, while some of the Clantons and some of the Earps died violently, most—Wyatt, Bat, Doc Holliday—died of cancer and other ailments, if only a few of old age. Clavin complicates the story by reminding readers that the Earps weren’t really the law in Tombstone and sometimes fell on the other side of the line and that the ordinary citizens of Tombstone and other famed Western venues valued order and peace and weren’t particularly keen on gunfighters and their mischief. Still, updating the old notion that the Earp myth is the American Iliad, the author is at his best when he delineates those fraught spasms of violence. “It is never a good sign for law-abiding citizens,” he writes at one high point, “to see Johnny Ringo rush into town, both him and his horse all in a lather.” Indeed not, even if Ringo wound up killing himself and law-abiding Tombstone faded into obscurity when the silver played out.
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21458-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.
A study of swimming as sport, survival method, basis for community, and route to physical and mental well-being.
For Bay Area writer Tsui (American Chinatown: A People's History of Five Neighborhoods, 2009), swimming is in her blood. As she recounts, her parents met in a Hong Kong swimming pool, and she often visited the beach as a child and competed on a swim team in high school. Midway through the engaging narrative, the author explains how she rejoined the team at age 40, just as her 6-year-old was signing up for the first time. Chronicling her interviews with scientists and swimmers alike, Tsui notes the many health benefits of swimming, some of which are mental. Swimmers often achieve the “flow” state and get their best ideas while in the water. Her travels took her from the California coast, where she dove for abalone and swam from Alcatraz back to San Francisco, to Tokyo, where she heard about the “samurai swimming” martial arts tradition. In Iceland, she met Guðlaugur Friðþórsson, a local celebrity who, in 1984, survived six hours in a winter sea after his fishing vessel capsized, earning him the nickname “the human seal.” Although humans are generally adapted to life on land, the author discovered that some have extra advantages in the water. The Bajau people of Indonesia, for instance, can do 10-minute free dives while hunting because their spleens are 50% larger than average. For most, though, it’s simply a matter of practice. Tsui discussed swimming with Dara Torres, who became the oldest Olympic swimmer at age 41, and swam with Kim Chambers, one of the few people to complete the daunting Oceans Seven marathon swim challenge. Drawing on personal experience, history, biology, and social science, the author conveys the appeal of “an unflinching giving-over to an element” and makes a convincing case for broader access to swimming education (372,000 people still drown annually).
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-61620-786-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
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