Despite the author's overt cheerleading for the coastal theory, a good overview of a fascinating slice of prehistory.
Canadian journalist Koppel chronicles recent efforts by archaeologists to prove that the first people came to America by boat, not on foot.
American anthropology was dominated for most of the 20th century by the theory that big-game hunters from Asia crossed an Alaskan land bridge during the last Ice Age, roughly 12,000 years ago, moving south through an ice-free corridor east of the Rockies. Their artifacts, found from Kansas to New Mexico, made up the Clovis and Folsom cultures. Alternative theories faced skepticism due to the paucity of artifacts or human remains to support them. But beginning in the 1960s, some archaeologists proposed a coastal route, arguing that the melting glaciers had covered earlier settlements with hundreds of feet of ocean water. Koppel documents their efforts to substantiate these theories. He treats the reader to eyewitness descriptions of scientists crawling through nearly inaccessible caves high in the hills of Alaska and British Columbia, dredging for artifacts in the seabed, camping out in bear country, and fighting a constant battle with the treacherous weather and currents of the North Pacific. The author also gives a broad survey of work done elsewhere in the Americas, focusing on discoveries that brought the “Clovis first” theory into question. Few of the scientists here are household names, but Koppel renders them as distinct individuals and conveys a clear picture of what their day-to-day work is like. When at last some key discoveries made it clear that coastal settlements are of at least equal antiquity with Clovis, readers are well briefed to understand why archaeologists then raised their glasses to toast the changing of a scientific paradigm.
Despite the author's overt cheerleading for the coastal theory, a good overview of a fascinating slice of prehistory.Pub Date: June 4, 2003
ISBN: 0-7434-5357-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2003
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
© 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.
