(8 color and 25 b&w pp. of illustrations, 12 maps—not seen) (First printing of 50,000)
As the United Kingdom uncertainly faces integration with Europe abroad and devolution at home, historian Davies (History
Emeritus/London Univ.; Europe: A History, not reviewed) delivers a narrative that is as opportune as it is ambitious and provocative. In contrast to conventional anglocentric histories, Davies emphasizes the contributions of Scotland, Wales, and Ireland to British history. He discusses the successive stages of history in the Isles involving the Celts, Romans, Anglo-Saxons, and Vikings, and he describes the steps that royal houses such as the Plantagenets, Tudors, Stuarts, and Hanoverians took toward the political consolidation of the two islands. He also traces the waxing and waning fortunes of various institutions associated with British nationalism (such as the Royal Navy, the aristocracy, the Protestant Supremacy, and the English language). Davies’s structure is idiosyncratic: A detailed treatment of a single episode symbolizing a particular period is typically followed by a broader summary of the period, then by an analysis of changing historiography about the times. Likewise, some events are emphasized at the expense of others (e.g., Scotland’s ill-starred Darien colony in the late 17th century is discussed at length, while the 1922 treaty finally granting self-government to Ireland is mentioned in perfunctory fashion). Yet his delight in overturning nationalist icons is wickedly infectious: Although Queen Elizabeth I is usually viewed as a model of toleration in contrast to "Bloody Mary," Davies holds that she merely chose different victims (namely, Catholics and Puritans) than her sister. More importantly, he opens a wider vista on events usually confined to English-only perspectives—noting, for instance, that the English Civil War was strongly affected by developments in Scotland, Ireland, and Wales. An exuberantly iconoclastic overturning of Albion’s sacred cows that simultaneously enlarges our understanding of the past.
(8 color and 25 b&w pp. of illustrations, 12 maps—not seen) (First printing of 50,000)Pub Date: March 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-19-513442-7
Page Count: 1222
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2000
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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