by Max Adams ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 11, 2016
Myth and ancient magic meet with solid historical ground in Adams’ voyage through a largely forgotten age.
This is no ordinary history of the Dark Ages but rather a confounding, engrossing amalgamation of information and beauty.
This is exactly the sort of book to expect from a man who is equal parts archaeologist, Early Medieval expert, outdoorsman, and wordsmith. Slipping into the skin of a wandering nomad, Adams (The Wisdom of Trees, 2015, etc.) strikes out around the country, solo or sometimes in the company of friends, for days on end with little more than a tent, pack, map, and his acute understanding of how landscape influenced cultural and political histories. When it comes to the Dark Ages, we could fill volumes with what we don’t know, but the Celtic world in Britain and beyond did not utterly disappear when the Roman Empire pulled out their last remaining garrison. Rather, as the author notes, “society survived and evolved; kings ruled, warriors fought, monks prayed and peasants farmed.” The oft-painted portrait of doom and neglect has come into question recently, and scholars have even rebranded the time period more respectfully as “Early Medieval.” However, there are still far too few authors covering this time period, which makes Adams’ book all the more valuable to readers. Through visits to ruined Roman outposts, ancient fortresses, historic churches, and other locales, the author seeks to flesh out the bones of an era that has flummoxed historians and archaeologists alike for centuries. His series of long walks and in some cases nautical ventures took him from Hadrian’s Wall to Ireland, Somerset, Northumberland, Cornwall, and throughout Scotland, and the journey is a pleasure for the medievally minded. While some things are freshly illuminated, Adams’ subject is elusive, and ultimately, this isn’t a book of new discovery. But the author’s act of retracing these paths breathes life back into the sites and people from hundreds of years ago, and for that experience alone, it is a worthy book.
Myth and ancient magic meet with solid historical ground in Adams’ voyage through a largely forgotten age.Pub Date: Oct. 11, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-68177-218-9
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Pegasus
Review Posted Online: Aug. 24, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2016
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by David Grann ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 18, 2017
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
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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
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BOOK TO SCREEN
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by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
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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by Elie Wiesel ; edited by Alan Rosen
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by Elie Wiesel ; illustrated by Mark Podwal
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by Elie Wiesel ; translated by Marion Wiesel
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