Novelist and historian Ellis (7he Rising of the Moon, 1987; The History of the Irish Working Class, 1973) offers a limpidly penned account of the racially tense, culturally fruitful relationship between the Romans and the Celts of Italy during the growth of the Roman Republic (390—191 b.c.). The Romans’ first military encounters with Celts are popularly thought to have been Julius Caesar’s conquests of Gaul in the first century b.c.. However, as the author points out, Romans encountered the warlike Celts on the Italian peninsula early in the development of the Roman super-state, and their initial experiences did not inspire confidence in the ultimate triumph of Roman arms. In 390 b.c., a Celtic army under a chieftain named Brennus defeated the Roman army in the battle of Allia; the ensuing occupation of Rome lasted seven months, until the Roman Senate bought off the Celts. The legacy of this humiliation, Ellis contends, was an enduring Roman hatred for the Celts that ultimately resulted in Roman destruction of Celtic civilization wherever the Romans found it. The author argues that the Roman-Celtic wars of the 200 years following the battle of Allia determined the course of the Roman Empire. While the “Celtic terror” continued to infect northern Italy and menace Rome, the Romans gradually learned to counter the Celtic tactic of massed charges—the Romans lost many battles but in the fateful battle of Telamon (225 b.c.) destroyed a large Celtic army that threatened the peninsula. This victory presaged final Roman triumph, although they continued to have trouble with the Celts during Hannibal’s invasion of Italy. Although the Celts were ultimately subjugated and absorbed into Roman society, Ellis argues that they made lasting contributions to Roman literature, culture, and even military science. Writing from a deep knowledge of Celtic culture, Ellis vividly evokes the clash between two proud societies. (8 pages b&w illustrations, maps, not seen)
Pub Date: Sept. 21, 1998
ISBN: 0-312-21419-7
Page Count: 284
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1998
HISTORY | ANCIENT | WORLD | GENERAL HISTORY
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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