by Peter Frankopan ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 16, 2016
A vastly rich historical tapestry that puts ongoing struggles in a new perspective.
Throughout history, Central Asia has been a nexus of burgeoning trade in goods, people, and ideas.
Drawing on prodigious sources, Frankopan (The First Crusade: The Call from the East, 2012, etc.), director of the Oxford Centre for Byzantine Research, creates a sweeping, fascinating chronicle of world history focused on trade—in silk, spices, furs, gold, silver, slaves, and religion—in a vast region from the Mediterranean’s eastern shores to the Himalayas. What is now the Caucasus, Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan once served as the bridge between Europe and Asia, an area, the author writes, “on which the globe spun,” where thriving cities housed diverse populations speaking a “cauldron” of languages, where “the world’s great religions burst into life” and “great empires rose and fell.” Trade in silk is exemplary of the confluence of cultures: the shimmering fabric was “a cipher for exoticism and eroticism” but also suspicion and conflict. Some thought the diaphanous material was “disgraceful” and sought to outlaw it; others damned the high cost of such luxuries. Controversies arose over religions, as well. The Silk Roads “were crowded, as deities and cults, priests and local rulers jostled with each other,” with political implications: “a society protected and favored by the right god, or gods, thrived; those promising false idols....suffered.” Among the many colorful figures the author vividly portrays, Genghis Khan emerges as a strategic genius who became “the undisputed master of the Mongolian steppes by 1206.” Although the author acknowledges the Mongols’ brutality, he also argues that their investment in infrastructure benefited the region. Likewise, he sees an upside to the Black Plague, which was a “catalyst for [the] social and economic change” that led to Europe’s rise. Until the 16th century, though, Europe was “little more than a sideshow” compared with “titanic struggles” in Central Asia. Frankopan weaves together his many narrative strands with verve and impressive scholarship.
A vastly rich historical tapestry that puts ongoing struggles in a new perspective.Pub Date: Feb. 16, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-94632-9
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Oct. 31, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2015
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by Tom Clavin ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 21, 2020
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
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by Bonnie Tsui ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 14, 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
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