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THE ATLANTIS BLUEPRINT

UNLOCKING THE ANCIENT MYSTERIES OF A LONG-LOST CIVILIZATION

Intriguing theories, long on speculation and short on hard evidence.

An exhaustively detailed argument that the legendary lost city was located just north of what is today Antarctica and that its highly evolved citizens traveled the world building and mapping sacred sites from Egypt to Mexico.

Drawing extensively on history, science, and old maps, as well as offering their own speculative theories about the disappearance of Atlantis, the authors offer not only a new location for the city but also assert that civilization is much older than currently thought. Plato mentioned Atlantis in his writings, they argue, and the notion of a civilization that suffered catastrophic destruction is found in many early writings, from the Bible to Sumerian tablets. Atlantis, thought to exist either in the western Mediterranean or in the Atlantic, was assumed to be a victim of either a comet or the events surrounding the Biblical flood. Flem-Ath theorizes here that the North Pole was once situated in the Hudson Bay, that the Antarctic climate was then temperate, and that Atlantis flourished there until catastrophic movements occurred in the Earth’s crust around 9600 b.c. Observing the movements of the stars and planets, the Atlantans had predicted and prepared for the upheaval and were able to flee, carrying their advanced knowledge to places as far flung as Egypt, Central America, and the Indus valley. To preserve their lore, they built monuments that became the sites of such sacred places as Machu Picchu, the pyramids, and Stonehenge. Mathematical calculations, detours into the founding of the Freemasons and the Knights Templar, who hid their secrets in a small French village where Jesus may have fled with Mary Magdalene after surviving the crucifixion, all make for a dizzying but stimulating theoretical extravaganza. The authors are most persuasive when demonstrating that intelligent society dates back further than is usually accepted.

Intriguing theories, long on speculation and short on hard evidence.

Pub Date: March 13, 2001

ISBN: 0-385-33479-6

Page Count: 448

Publisher: Delacorte

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2001

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KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON

THE OSAGE MURDERS AND THE BIRTH OF THE FBI

Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.

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  • Kirkus Reviews'
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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

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NIGHT

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. 

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.

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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