Fidler provides a palpable sense of this glittering city built as “a mirror of heaven.”
A history/travel guide about the fabled eastern capital of the Romans.
Between Constantinople’s founding in 330 to its final siege by the Ottoman Turks in 1453, there were nearly 100 Roman emperors (and several empresses) and a flourishing Roman, Greek, and Christian culture that defied the so-called Dark Ages of Western Europe. In this entertaining survey, Fidler, the host of a popular radio program in Australia, recounts this history through the lens of a recent trip with his 14-year-old son to Istanbul. Alternating between scholarship and travelogue, taking the form of a gentle lecture for the curious, sometimes-skeptical son, the narrative presents a palatable, nondidactic history lesson, providing a sense of how the Turkish culture reigns in the present. While scholars refer to this early era of the city as Byzantium, its inhabitants considered themselves proudly Roman, inheritors of the great, sprawling civilization of Augustus, with Latin as their language until Greek became the lingua franca after the rule of Justinian. While Rome was being sacked by the Visigoths, the eastern capital of Constantinople—two-thirds of which is surrounded by water, thus enjoying an incomparable strategic advantage—was constructing the great Theodosian Walls around its one land direction, just before Attila the Hun could attack in 447. Indeed, the Muslims trained their conquering eyes on the city numerous times until the eventual conquest by Mehmed II. The author navigates fluidly from the city’s founding by Constantine, the first Christian ruler, moving on to the significant rule of Justinian—who commissioned his famous Codex from Roman law, still pertinent in European civil law today—and his strong-willed wife, Theodora, and the construction of the Hagia Sophia. He also covers the schisms, plagues, Crusades, sieges, and the creation of the “deep state” that resonates today under Turkey’s current authoritarian prime minister.
Fidler provides a palpable sense of this glittering city built as “a mirror of heaven.”Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-68177-511-1
Page Count: 520
Publisher: Pegasus
Review Posted Online: June 14, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2017
Harari delivers yet another tour de force.
A highly instructive exploration of “current affairs and…the immediate future of human societies.”
Having produced an international bestseller about human origins (Sapiens, 2015, etc.) and avoided the sophomore jinx writing about our destiny (Homo Deus, 2017), Harari (History/Hebrew Univ. of Jerusalem) proves that he has not lost his touch, casting a brilliantly insightful eye on today’s myriad crises, from Trump to terrorism, Brexit to big data. As the author emphasizes, “humans think in stories rather than in facts, numbers, or equations, and the simpler the story, the better. Every person, group, and nation has its own tales and myths.” Three grand stories once predicted the future. World War II eliminated the fascist story but stimulated communism for a few decades until its collapse. The liberal story—think democracy, free markets, and globalism—reigned supreme for a decade until the 20th-century nasties—dictators, populists, and nationalists—came back in style. They promote jingoism over international cooperation, vilify the opposition, demonize immigrants and rival nations, and then win elections. “A bit like the Soviet elites in the 1980s,” writes Harari, “liberals don’t understand how history deviates from its preordained course, and they lack an alternative prism through which to interpret reality.” The author certainly understands, and in 21 painfully astute essays, he delivers his take on where our increasingly “post-truth” world is headed. Human ingenuity, which enables us to control the outside world, may soon re-engineer our insides, extend life, and guide our thoughts. Science-fiction movies get the future wrong, if only because they have happy endings. Most readers will find Harari’s narrative deliciously reasonable, including his explanation of the stories (not actually true but rational) of those who elect dictators, populists, and nationalists. His remedies for wildly disruptive technology (biotech, infotech) and its consequences (climate change, mass unemployment) ring true, provided nations act with more good sense than they have shown throughout history.
Harari delivers yet another tour de force.Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-51217-2
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2018
Chronology, photographs and personal knowledge combine to make a memorable commemorative presentation.
Jackie Kennedy's secret service agent Hill and co-author McCubbin team up for a follow-up to Mrs. Kennedy and Me (2012) in this well-illustrated narrative of those five days 50 years ago when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated.
Since Hill was part of the secret service detail assigned to protect the president and his wife, his firsthand account of those days is unique. The chronological approach, beginning before the presidential party even left the nation's capital on Nov. 21, shows Kennedy promoting his “New Frontier” policy and how he was received by Texans in San Antonio, Houston and Fort Worth before his arrival in Dallas. A crowd of more than 8,000 greeted him in Houston, and thousands more waited until 11 p.m. to greet the president at his stop in Fort Worth. Photographs highlight the enthusiasm of those who came to the airports and the routes the motorcades followed on that first day. At the Houston Coliseum, Kennedy addressed the leaders who were building NASA for the planned moon landing he had initiated. Hostile ads and flyers circulated in Dallas, but the president and his wife stopped their motorcade to respond to schoolchildren who held up a banner asking the president to stop and shake their hands. Hill recounts how, after Lee Harvey Oswald fired his fatal shots, he jumped onto the back of the presidential limousine. He was present at Parkland Hospital, where the president was declared dead, and on the plane when Lyndon Johnson was sworn in. Hill also reports the funeral procession and the ceremony in Arlington National Cemetery. “[Kennedy] would have not wanted his legacy, fifty years later, to be a debate about the details of his death,” writes the author. “Rather, he would want people to focus on the values and ideals in which he so passionately believed.”
Chronology, photographs and personal knowledge combine to make a memorable commemorative presentation.Pub Date: Nov. 19, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4767-3149-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2013
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