A history that will startle and satisfy any reader with a taste for unvarnished realities of the Old West.
Pedestrian title notwithstanding, this is an engrossing, lively, and comprehensive look "beneath the skirts" of our national Western-colonialist myth.
Wright (What They Didn't Teach You About the American Revolution, not reviewed) throws a wide net—ranging from pre-1800 expansionist exploration east of the Mississippi to the personal histories of such mythic figures as Calamity Jane and Bill Hickock—with consistently crisp results. The author is an amusing writer with a dead-eye for trenchant or encapsulating detail, capturing the complex social codes and individualistic drives towards prosperity (or mere survival) in what appears as a nonconformist, morally equivocal West. In cleanly organized chapters (such as "Trails West" and "The Railroads"), Wright addresses the severe travails of frontier life (from wars between farmers and ranchers to the blizzards of the 1880s, which killed millions of cattle), the official expansionist imperatives that promoted both railways and Native American resettlement, and the circumstances (especially California gold fever) that lured many from the urbanized East. Yet, despite a sound national-historical compass, his portrait emphasizes the raw human qualities and nitty-gritty necessities of western settlement: the earthiness portrayed is reminiscent of such cultural touchstones as Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian or Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch, although Wright asserts that the real West was far less violent than commonly held (with the significant exception of government massacres of Native Americans, several of which are addressed in chilling detail). Despite Wright's good-humored reportage, subtle tones of fragility and impending mortality develop: as in the Pyrrhic conclusion of the Indian Wars (involving such atrocities as the assassination of Sitting Bull) and the grim denouements of folk archetypes like Belle Starr, Geronimo, and Wyatt Earp, one is left sensing the linkage between technology's dawn and the closing of the frontier—the "real West's" extermination—and the fuzzy, sentimental spawning of 20th-century cinematic mythologies, wrong-headed yet appealing.
A history that will startle and satisfy any reader with a taste for unvarnished realities of the Old West.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-89141-690-0
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Presidio/Random
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
An engrossing, intense, and highly descriptive narrative chronicling the ghastly conditions three pregnant women suffered...
The incredible true story of three Jewish women who survived the Holocaust.
Priska, Rachel, and Anka were married Jewish women in their early 20s when the Nazis took control of Europe. Like millions of other Jews, they were forced to give up their normal lives, all of their belongings, and their homes. Shuttled into ghettos and then off to one of the most notorious camps, Auschwitz II-Birkenau, they suffered through the Nazis’ increasing atrocities. But these three women all held a secret: they were pregnant. They were moved from Auschwitz and ended up in Mauthausen, another notorious death camp. With facing the most horrible conditions imaginable, all three gave birth right before the Allies accepted Germany’s surrender. In this meticulously detailed account, Holden (Haatchi & Little B: The Inspiring True Story of One Boy and His Dog, 2014, etc.) compiles an enormous amount of information from interviews, letters, historical records, and personal visits to the sites where this story unfolded. The graphic history places readers in the moment and provides a sense of the enduring power of love that Priska, Rachel, and Anka had for their unborn children and for the husbands they so desperately hoped to see after the war. Even though it occurred more than 70 years ago, the story’s truth is so chillingly portrayed that it seems as if it could have happened recently. These three women and their infants survived in the face of death, and, Holden writes, “their babies went on to have babies of their own and create a second and then a third generation, all of whom continue to live their lives in defiance of Hitler’s plan to erase them from history and from memory.”
An engrossing, intense, and highly descriptive narrative chronicling the ghastly conditions three pregnant women suffered through at the hands of the Nazis.Pub Date: May 5, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-237025-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2015
Harari delivers yet another tour de force.
A highly instructive exploration of “current affairs and…the immediate future of human societies.”
Having produced an international bestseller about human origins (Sapiens, 2015, etc.) and avoided the sophomore jinx writing about our destiny (Homo Deus, 2017), Harari (History/Hebrew Univ. of Jerusalem) proves that he has not lost his touch, casting a brilliantly insightful eye on today’s myriad crises, from Trump to terrorism, Brexit to big data. As the author emphasizes, “humans think in stories rather than in facts, numbers, or equations, and the simpler the story, the better. Every person, group, and nation has its own tales and myths.” Three grand stories once predicted the future. World War II eliminated the fascist story but stimulated communism for a few decades until its collapse. The liberal story—think democracy, free markets, and globalism—reigned supreme for a decade until the 20th-century nasties—dictators, populists, and nationalists—came back in style. They promote jingoism over international cooperation, vilify the opposition, demonize immigrants and rival nations, and then win elections. “A bit like the Soviet elites in the 1980s,” writes Harari, “liberals don’t understand how history deviates from its preordained course, and they lack an alternative prism through which to interpret reality.” The author certainly understands, and in 21 painfully astute essays, he delivers his take on where our increasingly “post-truth” world is headed. Human ingenuity, which enables us to control the outside world, may soon re-engineer our insides, extend life, and guide our thoughts. Science-fiction movies get the future wrong, if only because they have happy endings. Most readers will find Harari’s narrative deliciously reasonable, including his explanation of the stories (not actually true but rational) of those who elect dictators, populists, and nationalists. His remedies for wildly disruptive technology (biotech, infotech) and its consequences (climate change, mass unemployment) ring true, provided nations act with more good sense than they have shown throughout history.
Harari delivers yet another tour de force.Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-51217-2
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2018
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