The author has studied his sources in depth and provides a great chronicle of these nation-shapers who stretched the limits...
Scottish archaeologist Oliver (A History of Scotland: Look Behind the Mist and Myth of Scottish History, 2009) explores the vast influence of the relatively short Viking Age.
The Viking Age began with the raid on Lindisfarne in 793 and lasted until the Norman invasion in 1066. The Vikings invaded, and often stayed, in lands from Turkey, and possibly Persia, all the way to Greenland. The men sought land, escape from harsh rulers, adventure, power and, most importantly, riches. When the Vikings invaded, they demanded and got enormous sums of Danegeld, a tax raised to pay tribute to them. It is reported that Aethelred the Unready (or poorly advised) paid 48,000 pounds (in weight) of silver in what was pure blackmail. The round-bottom, oar-driven boats used by the Swedish Vikings could not survive in the rigors of the North Sea and beyond, but they were excellent for entering rivers that led to the Black Sea. It was the invention of the keel that loosed the Norwegians, along with the Danes, on the West. These larger sailboats allowed them into the North Sea and inexorably onward through Scotland, Ireland, England, France and into the Mediterranean. They affected the destinies of all they met, established the first true democracy in Iceland and, as an unintended result, even spread Christianity. Their conversion was purely pragmatic and political; they understood that Christian barbarism was more acceptable than that of the great heathen hordes. Oliver had few resources for this history: coinage, archaeology and written records. While the Vikings left no written records, their victims did.
The author has studied his sources in depth and provides a great chronicle of these nation-shapers who stretched the limits of the known world.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-60598-483-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Pegasus
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2013
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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