As he typically does, Severin takes a fanciful story of adventure on the high seas and makes it delightfully real through...
The entertaining Severin (The Spice Islands Voyage, 1998, etc.) is off on another fact-finding mission, this time to take the measure of Robinson Crusoe.
Though it has been contended that Alexander Selkirk, the Scottish privateer marooned on Juan Fernandez for over four years, was the model for Crusoe in Defoe’s classic, Severin is not so sure. Wishing to know more about such figures, not all that uncommon in the buccaneering days, Severin “resolved to visit the scenes of their adventures and see those places in the context of being a maroon or castaway in the early eighteenth century.” To that end, he follows in the wake of people like George Shelvocke, who also washed up on Juan Fernandez, and of a Moskito man from the Nicaraguan coast—where fine fishermen lived who sailed with pirates to help provision ships during their long voyages—who was likely the prototype for Man Friday. There is also Captain Nathaniel Uring, who started a Scots colony in Panama after being shipwrecked, and Henry Pitman, a doctor transported for being a part of the rebellion against James II, who set up shop on Salt Tortuga. Severin even finds a contemporary castaway from a fishing boat whose travails are great but whose luck and mettle are typical of those who lived to tell their stories. Severin reads all the material that would have been available to Defoe—picaroons frequently wrote of their exploits and adventures—and travels to the islands where they were waylaid, returning with descriptions of lands often enough still lawless and decidedly elementary in their lifestyles. He concludes that Crusoe is a pastiche, a creation from a number of chronicles, with Pitman being a source for much of Defoe’s subject.
As he typically does, Severin takes a fanciful story of adventure on the high seas and makes it delightfully real through exacting research and personal observation. (Line drawings)Pub Date: June 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-465-07698-X
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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