Persistent—and academic—readers will gather a wealth of knowledge. General readers may want to steer clear.
A scholarly narrative of the Vikings in King Alfred’s Britain, from the end of the 700s to the 950s.
The latest book from Adams (In the Land of Giants: A Journey Through the Dark Ages, 2016, etc.) is nothing if not informative—at least for students of the period. This will be slow going for those with only a mild curiosity about the subject matter, though consulting the author’s previous book(s) will help. Readers with a reasonable knowledge of the geography and a passing acquaintance with the characters will be most edified yet still challenged. The author is commendably strict on historical accuracy, especially regarding names: “I have tried as far as possible to render spellings in their original language for the sake of authenticity.” Lacking arable land and political stability, the Norse looked to the south for expansion. “As the eighth century draws to a close,” writes Adams, “bands of feral men, playing by a new set of rules and bent on theft, kidnap, arson, torture and enslavement, prey on vulnerable communities.” In Ireland and France, especially, the monasteries and settlements were ripe for the picking. “The economic strengths that made Britain such an attractive target lay in the exploitation…of abundant resources,” writes the author, who also provides a clever map of the Viking travels modeled on the London Tube system. He shows the waterways, roads, and Roman forts and their interconnections with existing Roman roads. The author greatly expands our knowledge of raids and the paying of Danegeld, the Viking land tax, and the division of Britain into Wessex/Mercia and the Danelaw; the split was the continental divide of Britain. King Alfred codified laws and controlled the Vikings, but it was his son-in-law, son, daughter, and grandson who finished the job. The text is impeccably researched and augmented with family trees, illustrations, and maps, but this is only for the most devoted fans of Vikings and their history.
Persistent—and academic—readers will gather a wealth of knowledge. General readers may want to steer clear.Pub Date: Aug. 7, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-68177-797-9
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Pegasus
Review Posted Online: April 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
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 Yorkerstaff 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
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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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