An engrossing work about a related group of medieval queens.
A professor, genealogist, and author explores his royal female ancestors.
Researching the family tree of his maternal grandfather, William Henry Powers, Chylinski (Saints, Sinners, Scoundrels, and Some Ordinary People, 2015, etc.) takes the novel approach of tracing the matrilineal line, reasoning that humans are products of both their male and female ancestors. Of course, the author has traced his ancestry back far enough that the women he focuses on are all prominent—the eponymous medieval queens—and thus, researchable (unlike Great Aunt Millie Smith). Chylinski provides biographical sketches of 26 women associated with the Powers family line, many of them recognizable even to the nonhistorian—for example, St. Margaret of Scotland, Brunhilda of Austrasia, and Eleanor of Aquitaine. These biographies are followed by a lengthy list of references, a family chart for Powers, and a number of appendices providing additional information of interest to both genealogists and general readers. The 28 appendices cover varied topics, such as surname history, feudalism, saints and sainthood, the Crusades, and an explication of the Middle Ages. Perhaps most relevant to this work, in Appendix 3 (“The Founding Mothers of the Seven European Haplogroups”), Chylinski explains how the entire world population is descended from seven original women. Finally, he provides a surname index for his research. The appendices are intriguing but more suitable to the general reader than an academic researcher. As with the biographies, they provide a brief overview of various topics. The text is enriched immeasurably by the addition of photographs and images—primarily showing portraits, sculptures, and other artworks of the subjects or time period. There are also some reproductions of original texts. All of this material is helpfully listed in the table of contents. The biographies are prefaced by amusing quotes about women from such diverse sources as author Dave Barry (“You should never say anything to a woman that even remotely suggests that you think she is pregnant unless you can see an actual baby emerging from her at that moment”) and Friedrich Nietzsche (“In revenge and in love, woman is more barbaric than man is”). Chylinski’s work is a vibrant introduction to world history and genealogy for both general readers and family-tree enthusiasts.
An engrossing work about a related group of medieval queens.Pub Date: Nov. 10, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5177-1700-1
Page Count: 286
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
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
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
