Strong annotations and sweep make this book a one-stop shop for Atlantis seekers, though it will likely fail to persuade...
A writer cites diverse authorities, from Plato to psychics, to describe the daily life, culture, and ultimate cataclysm of mythic Atlantis.
Andrews (Lemuria and Atlantis, 2004) employs lucid language—even when approaching the most far-out and occult concepts—to present an extensive portrait of the so-called lost land of Atlantis. To mystics, New Age faithful, and travel tale spinners, Atlantis was an advanced island nation in the remote past (48,000 to 10,000 B.C.E.) that supposedly occupied the mid-Atlantic, interacted with space aliens and apparitions, and was submerged in a series of catastrophes, in part because of the citizens’ own disastrous choices and decline into decadence and malice. Not only is the author a believer, but she also claims in her introduction to have lived in past incarnations on Atlantis, maybe as one of the evildoers guilty of ruining this nuclear-powered, Cro-Magnon semi-utopia. But even with that extraordinary insight, Andrews keeps her own spirits reined in to present a vivid picture of Atlantis culture and history woven from others’ phantasms that have built up the place’s lore. These include the canonical accounts of Plato, the visions of 1930s seer Edgar Cayce, past-life fabulations by novelist Taylor Caldwell, and the “dictated” memoirs of a sort of ghost named Phylos to Victorian teen Frederick Oliver. (Several intriguing maps of Atlantis at various stages are also featured.) When possible, to shore up the psychic stuff, Andrews cites the explorations of mainstream science figures such as Jacques Cousteau and Hyatt Verrill, though she mostly falls back on Fort-ean types like Zecharia Sitchin and Charles Berlitz. Using “perhaps” quite a bit in the text, Andrews skillfully links persisting memories of Atlantis’ rise, fall, and gadgetry to worldwide myths, ranging from Celtic folklore to Ponce de León’s Fountain of Youth. Atlantis Armageddon’s ethnic survivors include some Arab and Native American tribes as well as the Appalachian “Melungeons” (this would make Elvis Presley an Atlantean). As with many speculative scientific books, this work displays an unfortunate tendency to cast a wide net over assorted paranormal flotsam and jetsam, whether these phenomena relate directly to the subject or not: sea serpents and Nessie (apparently Atlantis had chronic monster problems), pyramid power, Filipino psychic surgeons, European witchcraft, UFOs, and the Bermuda Triangle.
Strong annotations and sweep make this book a one-stop shop for Atlantis seekers, though it will likely fail to persuade skeptics to add the place to Google Earth.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5462-2419-8
Page Count: 292
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: May 2, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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