A nimble, wide-ranging history of homo faber, skillful man.
A biomechanics scholar examines the history of humankind from the vantage point of evolving technology.
Borrowing a page from Vaclav Smil, Ennos examines our species’ development of bodily extensions—atlatl, bow and arrow, steam engine, and so forth—that enabled us to harness ever greater amounts of power and leverage them in war and peace. Ennos begins at the beginning, literally: An early case study is the protohominid discovery that one could use a rock—a “percussion tool,” that is—to break open nuts, a discovery that leveraged the budding human development of muscles of “contractile force.” Soon enough, those ancestors came up with the “Swiss Army knife” of lithics, the hand ax, which could be used to make other tools as well as cut and hammer at things. But why use muscles when a nutcracker can take care of the job? Ennos’ history moves on to the development of tools, some astonishingly simple: “most notably sticks,” one of the “long cylindrical tools” used in everything from warfare to manufacturing and agriculture. But some tools, too, were complex to begin with and have gotten more complex ever since. Consider, as Ennos does, the history of metallurgy, which eventually begat artillery, huge waterproof ship hulls and boilers that “drove huge paddle wheels and propellers,” and on down to cell phones. Ennos isn’t uncritical: He notes, for example, that James Watt’s vaunted steam engine “had a miserably low efficiency of just 2 percent.” And he is quick to point out examples of overreach, a case in point being the overly heavy irrigation of Mesopotamian farmlands with saline water in antiquity, “possibly the first example of a man-made environmental disaster in history.” We continue that path of overreach at our peril, Ennos warns, though it won’t stop our propensity “to wreak devastation on the planet.”
A nimble, wide-ranging history of homo faber, skillful man.Pub Date: Feb. 17, 2026
ISBN: 9781668062791
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 12, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
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 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
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.
A coffee-table book celebrates Michelle Obama’s sense of fashion.
Illustrated with hundreds of full-color photographs, Obama’s chatty latest book begins with some school portraits from the author’s childhood in Chicago and fond memories of back-to-school shopping at Sears, then jumps into the intricacies of clothing oneself as the spouse of a presidential candidate and as the first lady. “People looked forward to the outfits, and once I got their attention, they listened to what I had to say. This is the soft power of fashion,” she says. Obama is grateful and frank about all the help she got along the way, and the volume includes a long section written by her primary wardrobe stylist, Koop—28 years old when she first took the job—and shorter sections by makeup artists and several hair stylists, who worked with wigs and hair extensions as Obama transitioned back to her natural hair, and grew out her bangs, at the end of her husband’s second term. Many of the designers of the author’s gowns, notably Jason Wu, who designed several of her more striking outfits, also contribute appreciative memories. Besides candid and more formal photographs, the volume features many sketches of her gowns by their designers, closeups on details of those gowns, and magazine covers from Better Homes & Gardens to Vogue. The author writes that as a Black woman, “I was under a particularly white-hot glare, constantly appraised for whether my outfits were ‘acceptable’ and ‘appropriate,’ the color of my skin somehow inviting even more judgment than the color of my dresses.” Overall, though, this is generally a canny, upbeat volume, with little in the way of surprising revelations.
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780593800706
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
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