An encyclopedic reference work to be consulted but likely not completely read by anyone other than fellow academics.
Wilson (History/Univ. of Hull; The Thirty Years War: Europe’s Tragedy, 2009, etc.) delves into the makeup, structure, and lands of the Holy Roman Empire, which lasted “more than a millennium, well over twice as long as imperial Rome itself.”
Beginning with the coronation of Charlemagne in 800, the empire lasted until the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars brought about its dissolution. The author takes Voltaire to task with his comment that it was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire, and he meticulously explains how it was structured and ruled. The Holy Roman Empire was unlike any other, defined by countless autonomous kingdoms led by an emperor with a divine mission. The emperor combined secular and ecclesiastical roles, and he existed as a protector of the papacy—but not a master. The empire lacked the things that constituted a single political core, such as a stable heartland, a capital city, central political institutions, or even a single “nation.” The Reichstag, representing the imperial estates, not the general population, had a broader remit than other countries, enacting law codes, military regulations, and policy implementation. The author avoids chronological narration, arguing that the empire never had a linear development. He traces the power and influence of the imperial church system and the educated clergy as well as the lords’ power over clerical appointments. As princes gained power, structure switched to a status hierarchy, persistent and increasingly rigid. To explain the details of this nebulous empire ruled by autonomous princes, Wilson takes thoroughness to a painful threshold. Many aspects can only be pinpointed with semantics. The author’s scholarship is unassailable, and his writing ability is clean and readable, but the subject is just too convoluted and even tedious to readers without deep historical background knowledge of this enormous federation.
An encyclopedic reference work to be consulted but likely not completely read by anyone other than fellow academics.Pub Date: Feb. 29, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-674-05809-5
Page Count: 1008
Publisher: Belknap/Harvard Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2015
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 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
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
© 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
