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THERMOPYLAE

THE BATTLE THAT CHANGED THE WORLD

A class in Western Civilization that both instructs and entertains.

A masterful account of the causes, preparations for and consequences of the three-day battle in 480 b.c. that claimed the lives of all 300 Spartan defenders of the eponymous pass and those of perhaps as many as 20,000 Persian invaders.

Cartledge (Greek History/Univ. of Cambridge) has published previously on the subject (The Spartans, 2003) and in his latest work emerges as an eloquent apologist of the Spartan way. He notes that among the ancient Greeks—and especially among the Lacedaemonians (aka Spartans)—warfare was not an aberration but an integral part of the culture. Sparta, unlike many Greek cities, had its own standing army, and boys were trained from the cradle to be warriors. (The author also notes that women experienced a parallel form of education that also included physical fitness.) He sees three important Spartan contributions to Western culture: an obsession with competition, a devotion to freedom and a capacity for criticism of the self and others. He acknowledges that the Spartans had no real high culture (art, drama) but that at Thermopylae, their stand inspired allies to rise up and defeat Xerxes’s huge invading army. Accompanied by a chronology and many maps (not seen), Cartledge’s account delays the story of the battle itself until midway—a clear, compelling chapter that describes everything from footwear (the Spartans wore none) to shield-design to flanking strategies. The battle, he argues, was a critical turning point in history. The final chapters deal with the enduring influence of Thermopylae—in poetry (Byron), fiction (Dickens alludes to it), art and cinema (a forthcoming film adapted from 300, Frank Miller’s graphic novel). Cartledge spends some time celebrating Herodotus (whose account of the battle is the most thorough, though not always reliable) and even offers a few thrusts of the sharp auctorial spear at George W. Bush.

A class in Western Civilization that both instructs and entertains.

Pub Date: Nov. 15, 2006

ISBN: 1-58567-566-0

Page Count: 376

Publisher: Overlook

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2006

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KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON

THE OSAGE MURDERS AND THE BIRTH OF THE FBI

Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.

Awards & Accolades

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  • Kirkus Reviews'
    Best Books Of 2017


  • New York Times Bestseller


  • IndieBound Bestseller


  • National Book Award Finalist

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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NIGHT

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. 

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.

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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