In this survey of Atlantis theories, Ellis (Monsters of the Sea, 1994, etc.) explains and then pokes holes in previous conjectures—from the scientifically grounded to the plain crazy—before tendering a few of his own It is all Plato’s fault, suggests Ellis—the mare’s nest of literature, philosophy, geology, archaeology, oceanography, ancient history, mythology, art history, mysticism, cryptology, and fantasy that can be summed up in the word “Atlantology.” A few mentions of that fabulous island in his Critias and Timaeus, and 2,500 years later we still haven’t heard the end of it. Ellis covers here the whole gamut of Atlantis explanations, compares them to a strict reading of Plato’s story, and proceeds to dismember them all. The more outlandish, like paranormal Edgar Cayce and occultist Madame Blavatsky, are easy to dismiss as they have no truck with Plato (not to mention their general lunacy); same goes for notions locating Atlantis in the Crimea, the Sahara, and central France. Jules Verne and Arthur Conan Doyle were in it for the entertainment value; even reputable (or not so reputable) investigators and cognoscenti like Francis Bacon, Ignatius Donnelly, Charles Pellegrino, Spyridon Marinatos, and Angelos Galanopoulos display instances of “rash assumption, hasty conclusions, circular reasoning, and argument based purely on rhetoric.” And his points are all well taken: Hold true to Plato’s tale—no fiddling around with the numbers, no monkeying with the geography—and all their speculations smell like three-day-old fish. As for Ellis’s thoughts on Atlantis: “I think it was entirely Plato’s creation,” that the story is likely a parable for the demise of Periclean Athens, its magical detailing plucked from contemporaneous regional sources: the architecture perhaps from the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, the geologic catastrophe from the Helice earthquake of 373 b.c. Just so: another corrupt civilization flooded into oblivion, a story as old as time. Of course, Atlantis is still lost, Ellis wags his head, perhaps a tad smugly. And it always will be. So stop looking, except in your imagination. (For another interpretation of Atlantis, see Rodney Castleden, Atlantis Destroyed, p. 627.) (52 photos and maps, not seen)
Pub Date: July 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-679-44602-8
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1998
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
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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