A wealth of natural history and a fine Napoleon biography.
A study of Napoleon Bonaparte’s life with an emphasis on horticulture that, believe it or not, works.
For sheer numbers, books on Napoleon (1769-1821) vie for first place with those on Lincoln, Churchill, Hitler, and other major historical figures, so there doesn’t seem to be an unexamined area of his life. However, historian and literary critic Scurr has found one. “Napoleon spent five years at the military school in Brienne-le-Chateau and six in St. Helena,” she writes. “These blocks of time enclose his life like bookends….In between his first and last gardens, the arc of his life rose toward the sky, before falling back down to earth.” There is no doubt that he paid a great deal of attention to a garden during his captivity on St. Helena, and a “highly embellished claim that he loved and tended a small garden at school” may not be wrong. Always fascinated by science, he established many of France’s educational institutions, museums, zoos, and botanical gardens that still exist, and he recruited a small army of scholars that accompanied him to Egypt during his 1798 invasion. Inevitably, as he accumulated power, he acquired land and properties—many abandoned and decayed since the French Revolution—and hired architects and gardeners to produce estates worthy of an emperor, a process to which his wife, Josephine, contributed enthusiastically (one of her goals “was to collect every variety of rose in the world”). Readers will learn a lot about the design and layout of the gardens as well as the controversy and expense involved. A diligent historian, Scurr does not ignore the wars and politics that dominated Napoleon’s life, and she concludes with a vivid account of the battle of Waterloo, in which the chateau of Hougoumont, with its “high garden walls,” played a central role. Those seeking more details will want a traditional work. Andrew Roberts’ 2014 biography should be the first choice, but this is a welcome addition to the literature.
A wealth of natural history and a fine Napoleon biography.Pub Date: June 15, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-63149-241-9
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Liveright/Norton
Review Posted Online: April 9, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.
Rootin’-tootin’ history of the dry-gulchers, horn-swogglers, and outright killers who populated the Wild West’s wildest city in the late 19th century.
The stories of Wyatt Earp and company, the shootout at the O.K. Corral, and Geronimo and the Apache Wars are all well known. Clavin, who has written books on Dodge City and Wild Bill Hickok, delivers a solid narrative that usefully links significant events—making allies of white enemies, for instance, in facing down the Apache threat, rustling from Mexico, and other ethnically charged circumstances. The author is a touch revisionist, in the modern fashion, in noting that the Earps and Clantons weren’t as bloodthirsty as popular culture has made them out to be. For example, Wyatt and Bat Masterson “took the ‘peace’ in peace officer literally and knew that the way to tame the notorious town was not to outkill the bad guys but to intimidate them, sometimes with the help of a gun barrel to the skull.” Indeed, while some of the Clantons and some of the Earps died violently, most—Wyatt, Bat, Doc Holliday—died of cancer and other ailments, if only a few of old age. Clavin complicates the story by reminding readers that the Earps weren’t really the law in Tombstone and sometimes fell on the other side of the line and that the ordinary citizens of Tombstone and other famed Western venues valued order and peace and weren’t particularly keen on gunfighters and their mischief. Still, updating the old notion that the Earp myth is the American Iliad, the author is at his best when he delineates those fraught spasms of violence. “It is never a good sign for law-abiding citizens,” he writes at one high point, “to see Johnny Ringo rush into town, both him and his horse all in a lather.” Indeed not, even if Ringo wound up killing himself and law-abiding Tombstone faded into obscurity when the silver played out.
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21458-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
A concise personal and scholarly history that avoids academic jargon as it illuminates emotional truths.
The Harvard historian and Texas native demonstrates what the holiday means to her and to the rest of the nation.
Initially celebrated primarily by Black Texans, Juneteenth refers to June 19, 1865, when a Union general arrived in Galveston to proclaim the end of slavery with the defeat of the Confederacy. If only history were that simple. In her latest, Gordon-Reed, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, and numerous other honors, describes how Whites raged and committed violence against celebratory Blacks as racism in Texas and across the country continued to spread through segregation, Jim Crow laws, and separate-but-equal rationalizations. As Gordon-Reed amply shows in this smooth combination of memoir, essay, and history, such racism is by no means a thing of the past, even as Juneteenth has come to be celebrated by all of Texas and throughout the U.S. The Galveston announcement, notes the author, came well after the Emancipation Proclamation but before the ratification of the 13th Amendment. Though Gordon-Reed writes fondly of her native state, especially the strong familial ties and sense of community, she acknowledges her challenges as a woman of color in a state where “the image of Texas has a gender and a race: “Texas is a White man.” The author astutely explores “what that means for everyone who lives in Texas and is not a White man.” With all of its diversity and geographic expanse, Texas also has a singular history—as part of Mexico, as its own republic from 1836 to 1846, and as a place that “has connections to people of African descent that go back centuries.” All of this provides context for the uniqueness of this historical moment, which Gordon-Reed explores with her characteristic rigor and insight.
A concise personal and scholarly history that avoids academic jargon as it illuminates emotional truths.Pub Date: May 4, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-63149-883-1
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Liveright/Norton
Review Posted Online: Feb. 23, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2021
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