An obscure tour of facts and conjecture related to the pyramids at Giza.
One man’s wide-ranging approach to the mysteries of the pyramids.
Fleck’s debut focuses on alternative readings of ancient Egyptian history. Rather than accepting the pyramids as burial sites, the author thinks they have a deeper purpose—one that’s accessible only through certain calculations and very specific readings of key texts. He draws on a variety of sources, from ancient Egyptian fables in translation to the work of fairly obscure archaeologists, to show readers how he found the true meaning of the pyramids: “I will take you to an unmarked and unremembered place in the desert,” he writes. “Why this spot? What do I believe is buried there?...I have my own suspicions, and if or when you make it to the end, you will have yours.” Before he makes the revelation about that spot in the desert, though, Fleck takes readers through calculations that center on the number 432, which he sees as emblematic of the Great Pyramid in particular. The significance of this number is never fully explained, although Fleck writes, “Where did I get that number? A better question would be, when looking at the Great Pyramid, how do you not get that number?” Readers will find it easy to replicate Fleck’s calculations, reading list, and satellite-aided views of the Egyptian desert. They may find it more difficult to arrive at his specific conclusions. For example, Fleck believes that the pyramids were the design of a man called Tog, known in his own time as Imhotep, but he doesn’t explain what Tog meant to accomplish with them. He posits that Tog was a polymath in the style of Leonardo da Vinci but doesn’t clarify precisely what his accomplishments may have been, beyond pyramid construction and the dissemination of monotheism. Fleck apparently means for his book to spark further inquiry, as he closes the main portion of the work by writing, “unless someone digs up and preserves the library of knowledge that I believe is buried under or near Khufu’s Crook, we will never know exactly what transpired over 4,500 years ago.”
An obscure tour of facts and conjecture related to the pyramids at Giza.Pub Date: Feb. 24, 2015
ISBN: 978-1503009431
Page Count: 100
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: April 7, 2015
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
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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