Ozment (Flesh and Spirit, 1999, etc.) argues persuasively that medieval and early Renaissance families displayed in abundance many of the characteristics of modern ones.
The author begins this brief but never superficial analysis by exposing the inadequacies and inaccuracies of the earlier theories of family and childhood—such as those advanced by Philippe Ariès and his successors (primarily Michael Mitterauer and Reinhard Sieder, Edward Shorter, Jean-Louis Flandrin, and Lawrence Stone). Ozment believes that the truth about family structure and dynamics cannot be inferred from statistics but is to be found instead in the archives of actual families—in surviving letters, diaries, financial records, wills, and other documents. He employs archival research (“microhistorical studies,” he calls them) to drive home his principal points—that women at the end of the Middle Ages were not terribly dissatisfied with their lot (they viewed themselves as co-workers and co-earners), that medieval parents did not consider their children “little adults” and in fact recognized that childhood consisted of various stages with varying requirements, that parents loved their children fiercely and mourned deeply their often premature deaths. He shows that infanticide, swaddling, and wet-nursing were not nearly so common as once thought—and in fact believes the killing of children is probably more common today. He has assembled some powerful documentary evidence to support his theses, all of it convincing, some of it amusing. A 17th-century mother advises her daughter: “At parties . . . accept drinks only from other girls.” And: “When boys happen to come into your bedroom, hide behind the bed and hit them in the face.” Ozment argues that the family has not evolved slowly over the last five centuries into the sentimental, nuclear unit it appears to be today; rather, it has always been both the bedrock and the fault line of humankind.
A groundbreaking work: The hammer of Ozment’s silvery prose and sturdy logic shatters the surprisingly fragile theories of some of the trendiest historians of the human family. (6 halftones, 4 line illustrations)Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-674-00483-3
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Harvard Univ.
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2001
Categories: GENERAL HISTORY | WORLD | HISTORY
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Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Categories: BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | HOLOCAUST | HISTORY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL HISTORY
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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. 20, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
Categories: GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL HISTORY | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | HISTORICAL & MILITARY | UNITED STATES | HISTORY
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