An erudite work that shows how one devoted scholar opened up an entire realm of knowledge.
A deeply researched look at the editor and author of one of the “great publishing feats” of the 16th century.
Born in the age of discovery, Venetian scholar Giovanni Battista Ramusio (1485-1557) worked in official capacities as a minister, but he also tirelessly organized information that seeped out in the form of journals and letters of new discoveries across the globe. These accounts described Magellan’s circumvention of the world, Cadamosto’s journey along the West Coast of Africa, Jacques Cartier’s travels in Canada, and Pizarro’s conquest of the Incas in Peru. Published in three volumes from 1550 to 1559, Ramusio’s Navigationi et Viaggi introduced much of the heretofore unknown geographical knowledge about three continents, covering Africa and Southeast Asia; then the New World; then Asia and the Muslim lands. In this elegant history, di Robilant, author of Irresistible North and A Venetian Affair, engagingly traces Ramusio’s vast scholarship, which began with his position as an editing assistant to Aldus Manutius, the legendary Venetian publisher of the classics. Working as a clerk in the chancery, then as the secretary to the senate, Ramusio moonlighted as a geographer, helping to publish Strabo’s Geography, and he was highly knowledgeable about classical scholars, who knew little of the layout of the globe. Over decades, Ramusio kept up with dramatic changes in exploration, including works by Antonio Pigafetta, one of the few to return from Magellan’s venture; Muslim convert John Leo, who traveled extensively in Africa; contemporaries Ludovico di Varthema and Cazazionor, who chronicled India and Ceylon; Andrea Navagero, who left a “treasure trove of first-rate material” about the bloody excursions of the Spanish in the New World. Among other richly detailed topics, di Robilant also examines Ramusio’s revisitation of Marco Polo’s journal.
An erudite work that shows how one devoted scholar opened up an entire realm of knowledge.Pub Date: June 18, 2024
ISBN: 9780307597076
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2024
An engrossing, intense, and highly descriptive narrative chronicling the ghastly conditions three pregnant women suffered...
The incredible true story of three Jewish women who survived the Holocaust.
Priska, Rachel, and Anka were married Jewish women in their early 20s when the Nazis took control of Europe. Like millions of other Jews, they were forced to give up their normal lives, all of their belongings, and their homes. Shuttled into ghettos and then off to one of the most notorious camps, Auschwitz II-Birkenau, they suffered through the Nazis’ increasing atrocities. But these three women all held a secret: they were pregnant. They were moved from Auschwitz and ended up in Mauthausen, another notorious death camp. With facing the most horrible conditions imaginable, all three gave birth right before the Allies accepted Germany’s surrender. In this meticulously detailed account, Holden (Haatchi & Little B: The Inspiring True Story of One Boy and His Dog, 2014, etc.) compiles an enormous amount of information from interviews, letters, historical records, and personal visits to the sites where this story unfolded. The graphic history places readers in the moment and provides a sense of the enduring power of love that Priska, Rachel, and Anka had for their unborn children and for the husbands they so desperately hoped to see after the war. Even though it occurred more than 70 years ago, the story’s truth is so chillingly portrayed that it seems as if it could have happened recently. These three women and their infants survived in the face of death, and, Holden writes, “their babies went on to have babies of their own and create a second and then a third generation, all of whom continue to live their lives in defiance of Hitler’s plan to erase them from history and from memory.”
An engrossing, intense, and highly descriptive narrative chronicling the ghastly conditions three pregnant women suffered through at the hands of the Nazis.Pub Date: May 5, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-237025-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2015
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.
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. 19, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
© 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.
