by Olivier Bernier ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 3, 2000
A distinguished work of popular history. (photos, maps, not seen)
A sweeping, impressively argued portrait of the dawn of the modern age that is also the most ambitious work yet by French
historian Bernier (Fireworks at Dusk, 1993, etc.). In 1800, Bernier notes, the "Europeanization of the world" was well underway: European ideas and European technology were stirring up change in almost every part of the globe and, even more vividly, European nations were extending their sway by conquest or economic dominance throughout Asia, Africa, and the Pacific. European conflicts were not, of course, anything new. But two events at the end of the 18th century—namely, the American and French revolutions—changed European politics forever and provided an enduring lesson for the wider world. The flourishing American republic provided a model of democratic government that would prove profoundly attractive and influential over the next two centuries, while the French revolution—larger, bloodier, and far more alarming—threw into question the 18th century's serene belief in the power of reason. It also served as the testing ground for a host of new institutions and ideas—state bureaucracies, standing national armies, new classes and social orders—and opened the way for the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte, who quickly became the single most influential figure on the continent. Bernier focuses on the twilight of the French Revolution and Napoleon's rise. He also devotes considerable space to tracing an outline of the fledgling years of the American republic, offering shrewd and original readings of Washington, Adams, and Jefferson. Although he is not, by and large, concerned with depicting the lives and experiences of the poor and laboring classes, Bernier is able to offer a panoramic portrait of the impact of new ideas on the world by focusing on leaders and thinkers and the events they precipitated.
A distinguished work of popular history. (photos, maps, not seen)Pub Date: March 3, 2000
ISBN: 0-471-30371-2
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Wiley
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2000
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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
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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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