An entertaining and even-handed introduction to the Crusades and medieval politics, this will disappoint those desiring an...
An interesting introduction to the Crusades, told through the history of the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Jesus Christ.
Read (The Patriot, 1995, etc.) writes a meticulously researched tome intended as a popular introduction to the history of the Knights Templar. A monastic order created in the 11th century to protect travelers and pilgrims to the recently reclaimed Holy Land of Jerusalem, the Templars were a force to be reckoned with, answerable only to the Pope. They rose to the heights of glory, serving as a unifying force among the perpetually bickering Western Europeans, and were respected by both Christian and Infidel as honest and courageous warriors. The author spends some time examining their curiously modern status as one of the first true multinational corporations, with prodigious European and Asian holdings, tax-exempt status, and extensive political influence. In spite of unquestioned military acumen and many great and impressive military victories, the order dissipated in a cloud of controversy. After less than 200 years, secular and canonical conspirators combined to bring down the Templars under charges of avarice, heresy, sodomy, and blasphemy. Unfortunately for this account, the Templars are only supporting characters in what is really a chronicle of Crusader politics; they take center stage only sporadically until their eventual trial and dissolution at the hands of King Philip IV of France and Pope Clement V. Unlike their brothers-in-arms the Hospitalers (who survive to this day as the Knights of Malta), the Templars quickly faded into the role of a historical curiosity.
An entertaining and even-handed introduction to the Crusades and medieval politics, this will disappoint those desiring an in-depth focus on the Knights themselves. (Seven maps, 16 pp. photos, not seen)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-312-26658-8
Page Count: 368
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2000
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
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