A deep immersion in a bloody era of ancient Rome, perfect for readers of Mary Beard and Tom Holland.
Most readers’ knowledge of the assassination in 44 B.C.E. ends with the bloody deed, but Stothard brings its aftermath to pulsing life. The last assassin of the title is Cassius Parmensis, the last of Caesar’s killers to suffer the vengeance of Octavian, Caesar’s great-nephew and successor. The author chronicles the development of the assassination plot, forged by men opposed to Caesar’s grab for absolute power, then his murder and the ensuing brutal civil war. Several characters, notably assassins Marcus Brutus and Gaius Cassius, have been memorialized by Shakespeare and may be familiar to readers, as will the orator Cicero, Octavian’s occasional ally Mark Antony, and Cleopatra. But other assassins get their moments as well: their lives, philosophies, and harrowing deaths, some on the battlefields of civil war, some by suicide, some slaughtered by Octavian’s henchmen. Stothard, former editor of the Times Literary Supplement, excels in bringing the ancient past to life. Here he is on the Roman festival of Lupercalia: “The men wore mud and goatskin loin cloths. The women bared their legs for the whips of the runners….It was a festival of breathlessness and nightmare, sex and myth, demons kept at bay by winter flowers.” The author vividly shows Octavian destroyed communities thought to be friendly to the assassins’ cause, seizing their valuable land and reapportioning it to his soldiers, slaughtering many, and sending others away as permanent refugees. One of Stothard’s accomplishments is to sustain the suspense of the hunt, even though readers know the outcome. Those assassins who could flee dispersed to the furthest reaches of the Roman world, but Octavian, “judge, jury and relentless pursuer,” ensured that they all died. Stothard writes as if he lives and breathes the air of this tumultuous time. His readers will feel, for a brief time, that they are there as well.
A deep immersion in a bloody era of ancient Rome, perfect for readers of Mary Beard and Tom Holland.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-19-752335-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: Aug. 25, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
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
Essential reading for any Twain buff and student of American literature.
A decidedly warts-and-all portrait of the man many consider to be America’s greatest writer.
It makes sense that distinguished biographer Chernow (Washington: A Life and Alexander Hamilton) has followed up his life of Ulysses S. Grant with one of Mark Twain: Twain, after all, pulled Grant out of near bankruptcy by publishing the ex-president’s Civil War memoir under extremely favorable royalty terms. The act reflected Twain’s inborn generosity and his near pathological fear of poverty, the prime mover for the constant activity that characterized the author’s life. As Chernow writes, Twain was “a protean figure who played the role of printer, pilot, miner, journalist, novelist, platform artist, toastmaster, publisher, art patron, pundit, polemicist, inventor, crusader, investor, and maverick.” He was also slippery: Twain left his beloved Mississippi River for the Nevada gold fields as a deserter from the Confederate militia, moved farther west to California to avoid being jailed for feuding, took up his pseudonym to stay a step ahead of anyone looking for Samuel Clemens, especially creditors. Twain’s flaws were many in his own day. Problematic in our own time is a casual racism that faded as he grew older (charting that “evolution in matters of racial tolerance” is one of the great strengths of Chernow’s book). Harder to explain away is Twain’s well-known but discomfiting attraction to adolescent and even preadolescent girls, recruiting “angel-fish” to keep him company and angrily declaring when asked, “It isn’t the public’s affair.” While Twain emerges from Chernow’s pages as the masterful—if sometimes wrathful and vengeful—writer that he is now widely recognized to be, he had other complexities, among them a certain gullibility as a businessman that kept that much-feared poverty often close to his door, as well as an overarchingly gloomy view of the human condition that seemed incongruous with his reputation, then and now, as a humanist.
Essential reading for any Twain buff and student of American literature.Pub Date: May 13, 2025
ISBN: 9780525561729
Page Count: 1200
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
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