Vital and knowledgeable biography of the noted son of a Genoese weaver, distilled from a four-volume work (Cristoforo Colombo) by Taviani, president of the Italian Senate. In contrast to Felipe Fernandez-Armesto's Columbus (p. 980), a real sense of the explorer's life as a fated adventure permeates this biography, beginning with Columbus's childhood in Genoa, the era's center of cartography and cosmography. As a teenager, Columbus smells the Orient for the first time on the Mediterranean island of Chios; shipwrecked after a bloody sea-battle in 1476, he takes the event in stride: ``The Lord our God miraculously sent me here so I could serve your highness....'' Taviani's asides are flavorful: Norsemen, he says, did not colonize North America because ``they did not find...potentates or lords whom they could massacre and whose goods they could seize''; Columbus falls in love in church because ``only in the half-light of a church could one stare at a nice girl without causing a scandal.'' (The girl is a full-blooded noble, well connected if impoverished.) The explorer's professional career and nautical genius are well detailed—endless voyages, endless accumulation of data and ideas, endless pursuit of honors. In the British isles, Columbus learns of the Norse discoveries; on the Atlantic, he learns about the trade winds, his knowledge of which established classic trade routes. When it's time to hustle, Columbus is canny and effective: Duke Don Luis de la Cerda Medicanelli sympathizes with ``Columbus's prudence and good sense...considering irrelevant any expenses deemed necessary, the more so as Columbus asked very little for himself.'' It's such a good deal that Ferdinand and Isabella take over, and Columbus plunges into the adventure that adds a hemisphere to the known world and introduces yaws—a ferocious new venereal disease—to Europe. A solid, well-written (and well-translated) account in which the man steps free of the research, complete with aspirations and appetites. (Ten full-color maps—not seen.)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1991
ISBN: 0-517-58474-3
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: April 29, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1991
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
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