by Jay Rubenstein ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 2011
An engaging, cautionary account emphasizing the consequences of untrammeled irrationalism.
Apocalyptic thinking in the organization and conduct of the First Crusade.
In order to profile the rationalizations and beliefs in the apocalyptical mission of some of the participants in the Crusade (approximately 1095-1099), Rubenstein (Medieval History/Univ. of Tennessee; Guibert de Nogent: Portrait of a Medieval Mind, 2002) examines chronicles from the 11th and 12th centuries, like the Gesta Francorum and the accounts of Raymond of Aguilers and Albert of Aachen. Like other historians, the divides participants into “popular” and “princely” components, led by Peter the Hermit on the one hand, and Norman and Frankish aristocrats on the other. Peter and his followers didn't make it, but on the way, those who took up the cross first massacred Jews in a variety of locales and then Christians in Hungary; then they attacked Constantinople and the Byzantine Emperor. The Emperor wanted to turn the crusaders against the Seljuk Turks, incoming invaders from Central Asia who were threatening the Byzantines from Central Anatolia, and succeeded to some extent. Unlike Anne-Marie Eddé's Saladin (2011), Rubenstein does not try to compare the stories of the chronicles with the diplomatic and political record. He focuses more on the supernatural elements in play, as portents and omens, ghostly visitors and holy relics came together with the bestiality of the crusaders' bloodthirsty conduct.
An engaging, cautionary account emphasizing the consequences of untrammeled irrationalism.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-465-01929-8
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 27, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
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by David Grann ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 18, 2017
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
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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 Yorker staff 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
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by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
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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