A humdrum history conveyed in (literally) robotic prose.
A brief overview of New Zealand’s history generated by an AI bot.
In charting the history of New Zealand, Spellmeyer notes her intention to “uphold a standard of cultural and political neutrality” and create an account that will “honour all facets of New Zealand’s past.” In order to achieve that quixotic end, she produces this book using an AI bot, one instructed to “tread lightly on the delicate tapestry of history, embracing its complexity without succumbing to the lure of oversimplification.” Oversimplification is precisely what results, however. For the most part, this is a bland historical account that tracks the development of the island from its early Polynesian settlement through European colonization to its modern instantiation as a sovereign nation that is a “social innovator,” pushing progressive norms like women’s suffrage, state-directed welfare, and ecological responsibility. Much of the account reads like Wikipedia-esque entries with brief sections devoted to the nation’s commitment to fostering multiculturalism and its tech industry while avoiding nuclear power and weapons. Additionally, there is a discussion of Māori culture, and the ways it was affected by European imperialism. The author’s conceit of maintaining neutrality seems naïve—she still has to make decisions about how to instruct the AI bot, and those decisions aren’t somehow free of subjectivity. The AI program was also designed by people with their own perspectives and biases. The real consequence of using AI is that the writing is featureless and redundant; it’s surprising how often words like “tapestry,” “landscape,” and “fabric” are used, often to describe the same thing: “The fabric of New Zealand cinema,” “tapestry of global cinema,” “the cinematic landscape.” This sentence reads like a computer approximating human speech: “As we journey together through the pages of this narrative, tracing the contours of Aotearoa’s land and the soul of its people, we stand at a vantage point that affords us a panoramic view of New Zealand’s transformative saga.” A soulless book, shorn of personality and insight.
A humdrum history conveyed in (literally) robotic prose.Pub Date: July 23, 2024
ISBN: 9781669881667
Page Count: 154
Publisher: XlibrisNZ
Review Posted Online: March 10, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Essential reading for any Twain buff and student of American literature.
A decidedly warts-and-all portrait of the man many consider to be America’s greatest writer.
It makes sense that distinguished biographer Chernow (Washington: A Life and Alexander Hamilton) has followed up his life of Ulysses S. Grant with one of Mark Twain: Twain, after all, pulled Grant out of near bankruptcy by publishing the ex-president’s Civil War memoir under extremely favorable royalty terms. The act reflected Twain’s inborn generosity and his near pathological fear of poverty, the prime mover for the constant activity that characterized the author’s life. As Chernow writes, Twain was “a protean figure who played the role of printer, pilot, miner, journalist, novelist, platform artist, toastmaster, publisher, art patron, pundit, polemicist, inventor, crusader, investor, and maverick.” He was also slippery: Twain left his beloved Mississippi River for the Nevada gold fields as a deserter from the Confederate militia, moved farther west to California to avoid being jailed for feuding, took up his pseudonym to stay a step ahead of anyone looking for Samuel Clemens, especially creditors. Twain’s flaws were many in his own day. Problematic in our own time is a casual racism that faded as he grew older (charting that “evolution in matters of racial tolerance” is one of the great strengths of Chernow’s book). Harder to explain away is Twain’s well-known but discomfiting attraction to adolescent and even preadolescent girls, recruiting “angel-fish” to keep him company and angrily declaring when asked, “It isn’t the public’s affair.” While Twain emerges from Chernow’s pages as the masterful—if sometimes wrathful and vengeful—writer that he is now widely recognized to be, he had other complexities, among them a certain gullibility as a businessman that kept that much-feared poverty often close to his door, as well as an overarchingly gloomy view of the human condition that seemed incongruous with his reputation, then and now, as a humanist.
Essential reading for any Twain buff and student of American literature.Pub Date: May 13, 2025
ISBN: 9780525561729
Page Count: 1200
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
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