A solid concept led astray by the perceived need to entertain the masses, à la the History Channel.
A lighthearted exploration of the history of the Bible, as seen through cities key to its development.
Cargill (Classics and Religious Studies/Univ. of Iowa), who has appeared on numerous TV documentaries, takes a populist approach to this history of the Bible. Never hesitating to use a pun, tell a personal story, or make a pop-culture reference (“If this sounds a lot like the plot of Mike Myers’s So I Married an Axe Murderer…”), the author writes for the masses, and it is intermittently entertaining; sometimes, though, it becomes annoying. Cargill’s approach toward explaining the history of the Bible makes sense. He sets out to introduce readers to a dozen cities that were formative in the stories behind, the writing of, or the later understanding of the Old and New Testaments. Beginning with the etymology of “Bible” as stemming from the Phoenician city of Byblos, the author dives into a chapter-by-chapter account of various cities and how they shaped the text of the Bible. At times, that role was through historical events. For instance, Jerusalem was the site of a number of stories in both the Old and New Testaments. In other cases, the role is indirect, as is the case with Ugarit, a city that gives us deeper understanding into the many ancient gods worshiped primarily by non-Jews and discussed throughout the Old Testament. Finally, there are cities that influenced our reading of the Bible—e.g., Alexandria, whose library preserved many texts from the same time period as the Bible, or Qumran, whose Dead Sea Scrolls gave us fresh insights into how Jews lived in connection with their texts in a particular ancient era. Cargill’s exploration of the role of cities is certainly intriguing and could be greatly expanded and deepened.
A solid concept led astray by the perceived need to entertain the masses, à la the History Channel.Pub Date: March 15, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-236674-0
Page Count: 336
Publisher: HarperOne
Review Posted Online: Feb. 22, 2016
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
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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