For students of Italian history, a thorough portrait of the many attempts in the last 300 years to prevent the death of...
Since the Risorgimento, Venice has faced many challenges, including an economy reliant on tourism and a population that rejects change. Bosworth (Senior Research Fellow/Jesus Coll., Oxford; Whispering City: Rome and Its Histories, 2011, etc.) shows a city lacking the vibrancy of Renaissance times.
The author understands Venetians’ longing for the republic dissolved by Napoleon and their fight against modernism. The struggle to return to the glory days of Dalmatian rule and position as a global trading center is a significant part of their psyche. The decision in 1866 to join the unification of Italy in the Risorgimento only made them part of a country; they would always be Venetian first. Proponents of the idea of com’era e dov’era (as it was and where it was) fight tooth and nail against modernism. Despite efforts from men like Giussepe Volpi and Giuseppe Giuriati, attempts to broaden Venice’s economy have been blocked by bureaucracy, dirty politics and disinterest. The Mestre and Maghera, where factories were built in attempts at industrialization to create employment outside of the tourist industry, were only slightly successful. Those intimately familiar with Venice will find the journey illuminating, while others may be searching for a map. Bosworth is meticulous in his approach, but readers without background knowledge about the city may get lost as the author cycles through a variety of place names without adequate explanation of the geography. The author calls Venice an ordinary city plagued by bad housing and recurrent unemployment; the threat of flooding and the city’s crumbling architecture are also significant pieces of the puzzle.
For students of Italian history, a thorough portrait of the many attempts in the last 300 years to prevent the death of Venice and to survive foreign rule, wars and horrendous poverty.Pub Date: Sept. 30, 2014
ISBN: 978-0300193879
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: July 7, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2014
HISTORY | MODERN | WORLD | GENERAL HISTORY
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
