by Richard Fletcher ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 2003
Graceful examination of the intricate tapestry of a culture so distant in time and temperament as to be virtually...
A swift and, by necessity, highly speculative account of a some murders between 1016 and 1074 that reveal much about 11th-century English politics, religion, codes of honor, and kingship.
British scholar Fletcher (The Barbarian Conversion, 1998, etc.) returns to his beloved early medieval period to pursue a story that first attracted his attention at age 14. He acknowledges that the documentary evidence is wispy, stating at one point that what we know of one character could fit on a postcard and in another comparing his chronology to a “leaky vessel on a sea of speculation,” but like all effective historians he can infer much from little. The region he brings to life is Northumberland, near Scotland (whose forces sallied south from time to time on raiding expeditions) and far enough from London that its inhabitants were occasionally resistant to such expressions of central authority as taxation. England had long been victimized by raids and occupations of varying durations, from the Romans and Vikings (meaning “sea raider,” Fletcher reminds) through the Angles/Saxons/Jutes to the Danes and Normans. “Wealth attracts predators,” the author declares; he proceeds to show how that fundamental attraction created bright splashes of blood across the countryside. The first murder occurred at Wiheal, where the unarmed Earl Uhtred of Northumbria was about to submit to the Danish invader Canute, but instead was slaughtered along with 40 of his important (and also unarmed) supporters by a rival named Thurbrand. A feud ensued, with sons and grandsons exchanging eyes for eyes and teeth for teeth in a variety of murder that their culture sanctioned—almost demanded, in fact—to satisfy family honor. Fletcher also explores the role played by the church and the nearly invisible histories of contemporary women, offering as well brief glimpses of the historical Macbeth.
Graceful examination of the intricate tapestry of a culture so distant in time and temperament as to be virtually extraterrestrial. (8 pp. b&w photos, 7 maps, 9 genealogical tables)Pub Date: July 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-19-516136-X
Page Count: 242
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2003
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by David Grann ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 18, 2017
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
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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 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
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by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
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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by Elie Wiesel ; illustrated by Mark Podwal
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by Elie Wiesel ; translated by Marion Wiesel
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