If any reader still believes that the year 1000 marked the Dark Ages, this insightful history will set them right.
Though Hansen (Chinese and World History/Yale Univ.; The Silk Road: A New History With Documents, 2016, etc.) pays some attention to the politics, religion, and culture of the era, she focuses on commerce, making a convincing case that this date “marked the start of globalization…when trade routes took shape all around the world that allowed goods, technologies, religions, and people to leave home and go somewhere new.” For commerce to circle the globe, traders had to reach the New World, which happened around 1000, although no one knew it at the time. As befits that era’s greatest explorers, Hansen begins with the Norse, who, after centuries of raiding around Europe and the Mediterranean, sailed to Iceland, then Greenland, then North America, where later chroniclers and recent archaeological evidence (plus the usual fakes) indicated their arrival around 1000 and some trading but no permanent settlement. Less known but far more significant, the Norse also battled their way east. Known by the locals as “Rus,” by 1000, they had reached the Caspian Sea, adopted Christianity, and laid the foundation of Russia. Despite the nearly complete absence of writing, when Columbus reached America in 1492 and Islamic slave traders penetrated Africa well before 1000, they found complex cultures with well-established trade routes. Hansen then moves on to the flourishing, prosperous, technically advanced Middle East, India, and Southeast Asia, ending with superpower China, the center of a massive trading system stretching from the Indies to Arabia and Africa. The author covers a vast amount of territory in a concise, readable manner, making for a welcome contribution to the popular literature on early global trade and geopolitics.
A thoroughly satisfying history of a distant era and people.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5011-9410-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
Categories: GENERAL HISTORY | EXPEDITIONS | WORLD | HISTORY
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Rootin’-tootin’ history of the dry-gulchers, horn-swogglers, and outright killers who populated the Wild West’s wildest city in the late 19th century.
The stories of Wyatt Earp and company, the shootout at the O.K. Corral, and Geronimo and the Apache Wars are all well known. Clavin, who has written books on Dodge City and Wild Bill Hickok, delivers a solid narrative that usefully links significant events—making allies of white enemies, for instance, in facing down the Apache threat, rustling from Mexico, and other ethnically charged circumstances. The author is a touch revisionist, in the modern fashion, in noting that the Earps and Clantons weren’t as bloodthirsty as popular culture has made them out to be. For example, Wyatt and Bat Masterson “took the ‘peace’ in peace officer literally and knew that the way to tame the notorious town was not to outkill the bad guys but to intimidate them, sometimes with the help of a gun barrel to the skull.” Indeed, while some of the Clantons and some of the Earps died violently, most—Wyatt, Bat, Doc Holliday—died of cancer and other ailments, if only a few of old age. Clavin complicates the story by reminding readers that the Earps weren’t really the law in Tombstone and sometimes fell on the other side of the line and that the ordinary citizens of Tombstone and other famed Western venues valued order and peace and weren’t particularly keen on gunfighters and their mischief. Still, updating the old notion that the Earp myth is the American Iliad, the author is at his best when he delineates those fraught spasms of violence. “It is never a good sign for law-abiding citizens,” he writes at one high point, “to see Johnny Ringo rush into town, both him and his horse all in a lather.” Indeed not, even if Ringo wound up killing himself and law-abiding Tombstone faded into obscurity when the silver played out.
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21458-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
Categories: GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL HISTORY | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | HISTORICAL & MILITARY | UNITED STATES | HISTORY
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Harari delivers yet another tour de force.
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A highly instructive exploration of “current affairs and…the immediate future of human societies.”
Having produced an international bestseller about human origins (Sapiens, 2015, etc.) and avoided the sophomore jinx writing about our destiny (Homo Deus, 2017), Harari (History/Hebrew Univ. of Jerusalem) proves that he has not lost his touch, casting a brilliantly insightful eye on today’s myriad crises, from Trump to terrorism, Brexit to big data. As the author emphasizes, “humans think in stories rather than in facts, numbers, or equations, and the simpler the story, the better. Every person, group, and nation has its own tales and myths.” Three grand stories once predicted the future. World War II eliminated the fascist story but stimulated communism for a few decades until its collapse. The liberal story—think democracy, free markets, and globalism—reigned supreme for a decade until the 20th-century nasties—dictators, populists, and nationalists—came back in style. They promote jingoism over international cooperation, vilify the opposition, demonize immigrants and rival nations, and then win elections. “A bit like the Soviet elites in the 1980s,” writes Harari, “liberals don’t understand how history deviates from its preordained course, and they lack an alternative prism through which to interpret reality.” The author certainly understands, and in 21 painfully astute essays, he delivers his take on where our increasingly “post-truth” world is headed. Human ingenuity, which enables us to control the outside world, may soon re-engineer our insides, extend life, and guide our thoughts. Science-fiction movies get the future wrong, if only because they have happy endings. Most readers will find Harari’s narrative deliciously reasonable, including his explanation of the stories (not actually true but rational) of those who elect dictators, populists, and nationalists. His remedies for wildly disruptive technology (biotech, infotech) and its consequences (climate change, mass unemployment) ring true, provided nations act with more good sense than they have shown throughout history.
Harari delivers yet another tour de force.Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-51217-2
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: June 27, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2018
Categories: GENERAL HISTORY | GENERAL CURRENT EVENTS & SOCIAL ISSUES | CURRENT EVENTS & SOCIAL ISSUES | MODERN | HISTORY
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