An informative history of a man of “adamantine strengths and…very human weaknesses” who incited a theological revolution.
Anticipating the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, Royal Historical Society vice president Pettegree (Modern History/Univ. of St. Andrews; The Invention of News: How the World Came to Know About Itself, 2014, etc.) offers a cogent and authoritative overview of Martin Luther (1483-1546) and of the burgeoning printing industry that disseminated his ideas.
Railing against clerical corruption, Luther gained renown through his prolific writings. Pettegree contends that Luther “invented a new form of theological writing: short, clear, and direct, speaking not only to his professional peers but to the wider Christian people.” In 1517, when Luther posted his 95 theses on the door of the Wittenberg church—a common place for announcements to the community—he was an unknown monk who had rarely published. His document, harshly critical of the selling of indulgences that duped Christians into believing they could buy salvation, was widely circulated; “thanks to print,” the author contends, “the indulgence controversy” became “a public matter.” Four years later, after publishing prolifically, Luther was declared a heretic and excommunicated. By the time he died, he was a bestselling author whose works included anti-Semitic (On the Jews and Their Lies) and violently abusive tracts. Pettegree attributes Luther’s fame both to his ideas and—a bit repetitiously—to his shrewd use of publishing. Although he acknowledges that “a large proportion of the population could not read, even in relatively sophisticated urban societies such as the German imperial cities,” readership among the clergy and intelligentsia was enough to warrant massive printings of Luther’s pamphlets, catechisms, and vernacular translation of the Bible. His friend and ally the artist Lucas Cranach designed attractive title pages highlighting Luther’s name, an innovation that contributed to the creation of what Pettegree calls “Brand Luther.”
An informative history of a man of “adamantine strengths and…very human weaknesses” who incited a theological revolution.Pub Date: Oct. 27, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-59420-496-8
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2015
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
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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