Reflecting that peculiarly British enthusiasm for travel and adventure in distant and usually inclement climes, veteran writer and traveler Severin (Tracking Marco Polo, 1986, etc.) went to Mongolia ``to see how much of the traditional way of life survived.'' Having written a thesis at Oxford on the first Europeans to venture into Central Asia during the great Mongol Empires of the 13th and 14th centuries, Severin was delighted when asked in the late 1980's to visit Mongolia. Once closed to Westerners, the country was now, with the collapse of Communism, welcoming Occidental visitors. The authorities were particularly interested in Severin participating in a projected, but subsequently deferred, epic ride on Mongolian horses to mark the 800th birthday of Genghis Khan. This ride would replicate journeys that Mongolian couriers regularly made in the Middle Ages from Mongolia to France. On his two visits to Mongolia, Severin visited the remote birthplace of Genghis Khan; traveled with Mongolian nomads on horseback over part of the conqueror's route through the mountainous regions of this large but thinly populated country, where summer is brief and winter brutal; encountered a plague-ridden marmot in a region where bubonic plague is endemic, confirming his belief that the Mongols were responsible for introducing the devastating disease to Europe; and met an ancient shaman whose existence testified to the continuing legacy of Genghis Khan. Ultimately, Severin concluded that, despite nearly 70 years of Communist rule, much of the old ways still remain. Rich in information and insight: a vivid portrait of a little- known people who, once the scourge of Europe, rode—on the remarkable horses whose descendants they still ride today—in pursuit of empire as far as the outer gates of Vienna. Travel writing at its best. (Photographs—16 pages b&w, 8 pages color—not seen.)
Pub Date: May 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-689-12134-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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