An amusing, though lightweight, examination of English life in the year 1000. With millennial fever gripping the publishing world, biographer Lacey (Grace, 1994, etc.) and London Independent journalist Danziger bring us back 1,000 years. Using a variety of sources, including the writings of the Venerable Bede, the Julius Work Calendar, and Beowulf, the authors probe topics as varied as Viking military strategy, coin-making, the Easter feast, and the development of English. It’s clear that Christianity permeated almost every aspect of daily life: “This was an age of faith. People believed as fervently in the powers of saints’ bones as many today believe that wheat bran or jogging or psychoanalysis can increase the sum of human happiness.” Christian monks preserved ancient knowledge by painstakingly transcribing Greek and Roman texts; they also established schools and hospitals. The Church’s political power rivaled the state’s, as both institutions promoted reverence for authority. Gerbert of Aurillac, the pope sitting in Rome at the millennium, was a ruthless political infighter and a brilliant scholar who helped popularize the abacus. The authors dub him, somewhat glibly, “the first millennium’s Bill Gates.” The book possesses a wide-ranging, quickly shifting focus that is alternately charming and exasperating. Like hummingbirds, the authors never spend much time on any one subject. For example, they’ll begin a chapter by discussing bread-making, then shift to the problems posed by insects, before finishing with the horrors of medieval medicine (leeches, bloodletting, etc.). While they lack the concentrated approach of historians, they’re quite entertaining. The book is weakest, however, when it tries to draw parallels between the year 1000 and today. It’s more than silly, for example, when they refer to the medicinal herb agrimony as “the Viagra of the year 1000.” A diverting and accessible read, though hardly noteworthy scholarship. Like a box of chocolates, it’s appetizing fun without much nutritional value. (13 b&w illustrations) (Radio satellite tour)
Pub Date: Feb. 10, 1999
ISBN: 0-316-55840-0
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1999
An authoritative guide leads an illuminating journey into the distant past.
A noted Egyptologist follows the search for burial sites.
Former director of the Egypt Exploration Society and president of the International Association of Egyptologists, Naunton has presented his research in several TV documentaries, most recently King Tut’s Tomb: The Hidden Chamber (2016). He makes his book debut with an insightful, informative, and beautifully illustrated overview of archaeologists’ quests to find the tombs of some of the most famous individuals of the ancient world—Imhotep, Nefertiti, Cleopatra, and the Macedonian leader Alexander the Great foremost among them—that so far have eluded discovery. Along with chronicling expeditions, Naunton provides colorful biographies of these major historical figures and the world they inhabited. The 19th-century craze for Egyptian antiquities resulted in major finds, but despite two centuries of efforts, much has not been revealed. Of the tombs that have been discovered over the years, the author notes that many have been found empty, plundered by robbers lusting after the considerable wealth buried with the mummified corpse. Some robberies, he speculates, were likely carried out by the same people who buried the deceased or by workers involved in the construction of a new tomb that opened accidentally into the old one. Naunton vividly describes the sumptuous riches of burial sites: In 1939, for example, a team under the direction of French archaeologist Pierre Montet discovered a royal tomb containing a “falcon-headed coffin of solid silver,” a solid gold funerary mask, a scarab of lapis lazuli, and objects made of other precious materials. The following year, his team discovered a mummy “wrapped in almost unimaginable riches,” including 22 bracelets, solid gold toe and finger rings, and jeweled weapons, amulets, and canes. While it seems mysterious that the tombs of famous individuals should remain hidden, Naunton suggests that ancient “waves of rebuilding,” sieges, geological changes, and recent redevelopment have caused sites to be obscured. The tomb of Cleopatra and, perhaps, Marc Antony, for example, may lie buried in the sea, off the coast of Alexandria.
An authoritative guide leads an illuminating journey into the distant past.Pub Date: Nov. 27, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-500-05199-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Thames & Hudson
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2018
Bernstein and Woodward, the two Washington Post journalists who broke the Big Story, tell how they did it by old fashioned seat-of-the-pants reporting — in other words, lots of intuition and a thick stack of phone numbers. They've saved a few scoops for the occasion, the biggest being the name of their early inside source, the "sacrificial lamb" H**h Sl**n. But Washingtonians who talked will be most surprised by the admission that their rumored contacts in the FBI and elsewhere never existed; many who were telephoned for "confirmation" were revealing more than they realized. The real drama, and there's plenty of it, lies in the private-eye tactics employed by Bernstein and Woodward (they refer to themselves in the third person, strictly on a last name basis). The centerpiece of their own covert operation was an unnamed high government source they call Deep Throat, with whom Woodward arranged secret meetings by positioning the potted palm on his balcony and through codes scribbled in his morning newspaper. Woodward's wee hours meetings with Deep Throat in an underground parking garage are sheer cinema: we can just see Robert Redford (it has to be Robert Redford) watching warily for muggers and stubbing out endless cigarettes while Deep Throat spills the inside dope about the plumbers. Then too, they amass enough seamy detail to fascinate even the most avid Watergate wallower — what a drunken and abusive Mitchell threatened to do to Post publisher Katherine Graham's tit, and more on the Segretti connection — including the activities of a USC campus political group known as the Ratfuckers whose former members served as a recruiting pool for the Nixon White House. As the scandal goes public and out of their hands Bernstein and Woodward seem as stunned as the rest of us at where their search for the "head ratfucker" has led. You have to agree with what their City Editor Barry Sussman realized way back in the beginning — "We've never had a story like this. Just never."
Pub Date: June 18, 1974
ISBN: 0671894412
Page Count: 372
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 10, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1974
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