A somewhat useful historical reference driven by an idiosyncratic definition of “titan.”
An encyclopedia of “individuals who have each somehow changed the course of world events,” in which murderers and criminals find prominent places.
Award-winning historian and novelist Montefiore (Red Sky at Noon, 2018, etc.)—assisted by Bew (History and Foreign Policy/King’s Coll. London; Citizen Clem: A Biography of Attlee, 2016, etc.), Frampton (Modern History/Queen Mary, Univ. of London; The Muslim Brotherhood and the West, 2018, etc.), Jones (The Templars: The Rise and Spectacular Fall of God’s Holy Warriors, 2017, etc.), and Renton (Those Wild Wyndhams: Three Sisters at the Heart of Power, 2018)—has assembled a wide-ranging compendium of short biographical essays of nearly 200 men (and a few women) who “created the world we live in today.” Admitting that the list is “totally subjective,” Montefiore tends toward the monstrous and murderous. While many entries are predictable, including canonical philosophers and religious figures, political leaders, and too few artists and scientists, some choices may baffle readers. Why Jack the Ripper, for example, but not Thomas Edison? Why Al Capone but not Sigmund Freud? Basil II, a ruler of the Byzantine empire, impresses the author as “the ultimate hero-monster,” a man with an “explosive temper” who earned the epithet “the Bulgar Slayer.” Vlad the Impaler was “a murdering sadist who displayed cruelty so savage that he inspired the legend of Dracula.” Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov “organized and coordinated Stalin’s Great Terror, during which a million innocent victims were shot and millions more exiled to concentration camps.” Lavrenti Pavlovich Beria, a Soviet secret policeman, was a “psychopathic rapist and enthusiastic sadist” as well as “a perverted thug.” Even when choosing figures from the arts, Montefiore tends toward the swashbuckling (Byron, Hemingway, Picasso) or tormented (Oscar Wilde, Toulouse-Lautrec). Jane Austen seems out of place in their company. Although the entries are lively and informative, the author does not make the case that all of these individuals deserve recognition among historical giants such as Galileo and Newton, Gandhi and Churchill, or even Elvis Presley.
A somewhat useful historical reference driven by an idiosyncratic definition of “titan.”Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-56446-1
Page Count: 640
Publisher: Vintage
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and...
A dense, absorbing investigation into the medical community's exploitation of a dying woman and her family's struggle to salvage truth and dignity decades later.
In a well-paced, vibrant narrative, Popular Science contributor and Culture Dish blogger Skloot (Creative Writing/Univ. of Memphis) demonstrates that for every human cell put under a microscope, a complex life story is inexorably attached, to which doctors, researchers and laboratories have often been woefully insensitive and unaccountable. In 1951, Henrietta Lacks, an African-American mother of five, was diagnosed with what proved to be a fatal form of cervical cancer. At Johns Hopkins, the doctors harvested cells from her cervix without her permission and distributed them to labs around the globe, where they were multiplied and used for a diverse array of treatments. Known as HeLa cells, they became one of the world's most ubiquitous sources for medical research of everything from hormones, steroids and vitamins to gene mapping, in vitro fertilization, even the polio vaccine—all without the knowledge, must less consent, of the Lacks family. Skloot spent a decade interviewing every relative of Lacks she could find, excavating difficult memories and long-simmering outrage that had lay dormant since their loved one's sorrowful demise. Equal parts intimate biography and brutal clinical reportage, Skloot's graceful narrative adeptly navigates the wrenching Lack family recollections and the sobering, overarching realities of poverty and pre–civil-rights racism. The author's style is matched by a methodical scientific rigor and manifest expertise in the field.
Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and Petri dish politics.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4000-5217-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
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