An account of war and religious fanaticism with plenty of spice, though not up to the adventure level of the first two.
Third installment in Scarrow’s saga of Roman centurion Macro (The Eagle’s Conquest, 2002, etc.), who rose from obscurity to command legionaries in an obscure outpost of the Empire known as Britain.
Those who have followed Macro’s rise will know the terrain, but newcomers should have no trouble picking up in media res. An illiterate foot soldier who rose to become a centurion (rough equivalent of a modern captain) in the crack Second Legion, Macro has survived both combat and palace intrigue and finds himself beset now by the warring tribes of Britain in a.d. 44. Although the British warlord Caratacus was soundly defeated (in the last episode), he somehow managed to escape the battlefield alive and has been coordinating resistance efforts against the Roman occupiers ever since. Some of his fiercest allies are the Druids of the Dark Moon, a bloodthirsty and fanatical cult who maraud through the country arousing terror in Roman and Briton alike. The Druids even manage to capture the wife and children of the Roman General Plautius after a shipwreck, and they demand the release of Druid prisoners in exchange for their prisoners’ safe return. Since the Druids are fond of burning their captives alive in gigantic wooden totems known as Wicker Men, there’s little doubt what lies in store for the general’s family should he refuse to comply. But Macro and his faithful lieutenant Cato believe they can organize a rescue in time. Macro is aided by the dauntless Boudica, a tough daughter of the neutral Iceni tribe, who knows more about dealing with the Druids than ten centurions could ever learn. Together, Macro and Boudica manage something even more difficult than the raid itself—that is, fall in love.
An account of war and religious fanaticism with plenty of spice, though not up to the adventure level of the first two.Pub Date: Feb. 20, 2004
ISBN: 0-312-30535-4
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2003
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.
A study of swimming as sport, survival method, basis for community, and route to physical and mental well-being.
For Bay Area writer Tsui (American Chinatown: A People's History of Five Neighborhoods, 2009), swimming is in her blood. As she recounts, her parents met in a Hong Kong swimming pool, and she often visited the beach as a child and competed on a swim team in high school. Midway through the engaging narrative, the author explains how she rejoined the team at age 40, just as her 6-year-old was signing up for the first time. Chronicling her interviews with scientists and swimmers alike, Tsui notes the many health benefits of swimming, some of which are mental. Swimmers often achieve the “flow” state and get their best ideas while in the water. Her travels took her from the California coast, where she dove for abalone and swam from Alcatraz back to San Francisco, to Tokyo, where she heard about the “samurai swimming” martial arts tradition. In Iceland, she met Guðlaugur Friðþórsson, a local celebrity who, in 1984, survived six hours in a winter sea after his fishing vessel capsized, earning him the nickname “the human seal.” Although humans are generally adapted to life on land, the author discovered that some have extra advantages in the water. The Bajau people of Indonesia, for instance, can do 10-minute free dives while hunting because their spleens are 50% larger than average. For most, though, it’s simply a matter of practice. Tsui discussed swimming with Dara Torres, who became the oldest Olympic swimmer at age 41, and swam with Kim Chambers, one of the few people to complete the daunting Oceans Seven marathon swim challenge. Drawing on personal experience, history, biology, and social science, the author conveys the appeal of “an unflinching giving-over to an element” and makes a convincing case for broader access to swimming education (372,000 people still drown annually).
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-61620-786-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
Thus the second most costly war in American history, whose “outcome seemed little short of a miracle.” A sterling account.
A master storyteller’s character-driven account of a storied year in the American Revolution.
Against world systems, economic determinist and other external-cause schools of historical thought, McCullough (John Adams, 2001, etc.) has an old-fashioned fondness for the great- (and not-so-great) man tradition, which may not have much explanatory power but almost always yields better-written books. McCullough opens with a courteous nod to the customary villain in the story of American independence, George III, who turns out to be a pleasant and artistically inclined fellow who relied on poor advice; his Westmoreland, for instance, was a British general named Grant who boasted that with 5,000 soldiers he “could march from one end of the American continent to the other.” Other British officers agitated for peace, even as George wondered why Americans would not understand that to be a British subject was to be free by definition. Against these men stood arrayed a rebel army that was, at the least, unimpressive; McCullough observes that New Englanders, for instance, considered washing clothes to be women’s work and so wore filthy clothes until they rotted, with the result that Burgoyne and company had a point in thinking the Continentals a bunch of ragamuffins. The Americans’ military fortunes were none too good for much of 1776, the year of the Declaration; at the slowly unfolding battle for control over New York, George Washington was moved to despair at the sight of sometimes drunk soldiers running from the enemy and of their officers “who, instead of attending to their duty, had stood gazing like bumpkins” at the spectacle. For a man such as Washington, to be a laughingstock was the supreme insult, but the British were driven by other motives than to irritate the general—not least of them reluctance to give up a rich, fertile and beautiful land that, McCullough notes, was providing the world’s highest standard of living in 1776.
Thus the second most costly war in American history, whose “outcome seemed little short of a miracle.” A sterling account.Pub Date: June 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-7432-2671-2
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2005
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