A loving yet clear-eyed celebration of the enigmatic icon on the Adriatic.
The indefatigable chronicler of his native England’s culture looks overseas to the magical Italian city on a lagoon.
In this impressionistic appreciation of Venice, Ackroyd (The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein, 2009, etc.) opens with a haunting evocation of the site as it appeared to fifth-century mainlanders fleeing barbarian invasions: “a solitary place, its silence broken only by the calls of seabirds and the crash of the billows of the sea and the sound of the wind soughing in the rushes.” But the city would not remain silent for long. It was a center of trade for more than 1,000 years, as its ships brought the spices of the East to Europe and carried manufactured items in the opposite direction. Its position at the economic forefront faltered after the 16th century, when city authorities refused to compromise the standards of the luxury goods for which Venice was famous and lost out to the merchants of England and Holland, able to offer cloths and metals for less. But Venice reinvented itself as a playground for foreigners, trading on its dazzling art and architecture and its seductive music and theater to attract the hordes of visitors that still clog the Piazza San Marco today. Yet Ackroyd reminds us that this city of brilliant surfaces has always also been a place of mystery, of secrets and crimes concealed behind opaque facades. Mosaics and glass are its characteristic products; its greatest painters (Titian, Tintoretto) excel in color and drama, not psychological complexity; ditto the music of native son Vivaldi and the beloved comedies of Goldoni. The author affectionately portrays Venetians as intensely social and deeply conservative, creators of an oligarchic democracy that endured for centuries. Public life was as theatrical as the opera; little was at stake because nothing ever changed. There’s no need to lament the city’s contemporary role as a tourist attraction, writes Ackroyd, because “the tourist Venice is the essential, quintessential, Venice.”
A loving yet clear-eyed celebration of the enigmatic icon on the Adriatic.Pub Date: Nov. 2, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-385-53152-8
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2010
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.
Rootin’-tootin’ history of the dry-gulchers, horn-swogglers, and outright killers who populated the Wild West’s wildest city in the late 19th century.
The stories of Wyatt Earp and company, the shootout at the O.K. Corral, and Geronimo and the Apache Wars are all well known. Clavin, who has written books on Dodge City and Wild Bill Hickok, delivers a solid narrative that usefully links significant events—making allies of white enemies, for instance, in facing down the Apache threat, rustling from Mexico, and other ethnically charged circumstances. The author is a touch revisionist, in the modern fashion, in noting that the Earps and Clantons weren’t as bloodthirsty as popular culture has made them out to be. For example, Wyatt and Bat Masterson “took the ‘peace’ in peace officer literally and knew that the way to tame the notorious town was not to outkill the bad guys but to intimidate them, sometimes with the help of a gun barrel to the skull.” Indeed, while some of the Clantons and some of the Earps died violently, most—Wyatt, Bat, Doc Holliday—died of cancer and other ailments, if only a few of old age. Clavin complicates the story by reminding readers that the Earps weren’t really the law in Tombstone and sometimes fell on the other side of the line and that the ordinary citizens of Tombstone and other famed Western venues valued order and peace and weren’t particularly keen on gunfighters and their mischief. Still, updating the old notion that the Earp myth is the American Iliad, the author is at his best when he delineates those fraught spasms of violence. “It is never a good sign for law-abiding citizens,” he writes at one high point, “to see Johnny Ringo rush into town, both him and his horse all in a lather.” Indeed not, even if Ringo wound up killing himself and law-abiding Tombstone faded into obscurity when the silver played out.
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21458-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.
A study of swimming as sport, survival method, basis for community, and route to physical and mental well-being.
For Bay Area writer Tsui (American Chinatown: A People's History of Five Neighborhoods, 2009), swimming is in her blood. As she recounts, her parents met in a Hong Kong swimming pool, and she often visited the beach as a child and competed on a swim team in high school. Midway through the engaging narrative, the author explains how she rejoined the team at age 40, just as her 6-year-old was signing up for the first time. Chronicling her interviews with scientists and swimmers alike, Tsui notes the many health benefits of swimming, some of which are mental. Swimmers often achieve the “flow” state and get their best ideas while in the water. Her travels took her from the California coast, where she dove for abalone and swam from Alcatraz back to San Francisco, to Tokyo, where she heard about the “samurai swimming” martial arts tradition. In Iceland, she met Guðlaugur Friðþórsson, a local celebrity who, in 1984, survived six hours in a winter sea after his fishing vessel capsized, earning him the nickname “the human seal.” Although humans are generally adapted to life on land, the author discovered that some have extra advantages in the water. The Bajau people of Indonesia, for instance, can do 10-minute free dives while hunting because their spleens are 50% larger than average. For most, though, it’s simply a matter of practice. Tsui discussed swimming with Dara Torres, who became the oldest Olympic swimmer at age 41, and swam with Kim Chambers, one of the few people to complete the daunting Oceans Seven marathon swim challenge. Drawing on personal experience, history, biology, and social science, the author conveys the appeal of “an unflinching giving-over to an element” and makes a convincing case for broader access to swimming education (372,000 people still drown annually).
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-61620-786-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
