A disturbing tale of greed and cultural demolition, robust in the telling, scorching in its indictment. (16 halftones...
Art journalist Atwood outlines the systematic destruction of archaeological sites, concentrating on Peru.
“Looting robs a country of its heritage, but, even worse, it destroys everyone’s ability to know about the past,” the author writes. “Looting obliterates the memory of the ancient world and turns its highest artistic creations into decorations, adornments on a shelf.” This is the crux of the matter, for stolen pieces must, perforce, disappear from professional and public viewing, at least temporarily. Atwood is well aware of the motives that fuel the looting of sites, from pure economic desperation to the sheer greed of professional grave-robbers who sally forth with a laundry list in hand. But what he wants to elucidate here is how the process actually works, from the first dig of the shovel to the display of the objects in some chic private environment. No one can plead ignorance anymore, he asserts, for the modern trade in illegal antiquities has been reported in the popular press for decades. What is most galling is the number of people who are in cahoots, beginning with the robbers themselves, whatever their station or circumstance, right up to the collectors, be they individuals who squirrel away their purchases in vaults, or (and this will catch a few breaths) public institutions. “In the United States today,” Atwood reminds us, “tax laws [allow] collectors to donate looted goods to museums in exchange for a deduction.” Norton Simon can boast, “Hell, yes, it was smuggled. I spent between $15 million and $16 million over the last two years on Asian art, and most of it was smuggled.” Forget about Lord Elgin for the moment; take a look at the provenance of that Peruvian textile at your local museum. No, not every museum holding is an act of pillage, but Atwood, a participant/observer of the first water, will make you wonder.
A disturbing tale of greed and cultural demolition, robust in the telling, scorching in its indictment. (16 halftones throughout, not seen)Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-312-32406-5
Page Count: 352
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2004
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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