A fine history of a people who deserve more attention.
A fresh look at “the Vikings and their Scandinavian offspring,” who have always been considered “among the world’s most powerful and important journey makers.”
Hudson Institute senior fellow Herman makes a convincing case that the peoples of Scandinavia have contributed more to today’s world than they are given credit for. For more than two centuries after 780 C.E., Vikings wreaked havoc over immense areas of Europe and east Eurasia. Then, writes the author, “their role shifted from marauder to trader to settler.” An ex-Norseman ruled much of France and then invaded England in 1066 as William the Conqueror, who won at the Battle of Hastings. Other Normans expelled the Muslims from southern Italy and Sicily, becoming the dominant power on the peninsula and allowing the papacy to vastly expand its influence. Ironically, the lands they left behind became a backwater until the 16th century, when the Reformation returned them to center stage. Unlike persistent resistance in Britain and civil war in France and Germany, the Reformation converted Scandinavia with much less bloodshed. This proved critical when Catholic armies of the Holy Roman Empire were rampaging across Lutheran Germany. Their only opposition were forces led by Sweden’s King Gustavus Adolphus (1594-1632), who won spectacular victories that preserved Protestantism in Germany and may have made him Holy Roman Emperor—if he hadn’t died in battle. Herman then fast-forwards to the 19th century, when population and poverty grew and immigration to the U.S. became a major force. In the middle third of the book, the author describes Scandinavia’s contribution to America, which includes a significant chapter on the Civil War and long biographies of famous Scandinavian Americans, including Charles Lindbergh, Thorstein Veblen, Knut Rockne, and Carl Sandburg. In the 20th century, aided by the decision to stay out of World War I and escaping lightly from World War II, Scandinavian nations prospered into some of the world’s wealthiest and most socially progressive.
A fine history of a people who deserve more attention.Pub Date: Aug. 3, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-328-59590-4
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: June 1, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2021
Gessen is a Suetonius for our time, documenting the death of the old America while holding out slim hope for its restoration.
The National Book Award winner delivers a handbook for an age in which egomania is morphing into autocracy at warp speed.
New Yorker contributor Gessen, an immigrant from what was then the Soviet Union, understands totalitarian systems, especially the ways in which, under totalitarian rule, language is degraded into meaninglessness. Today, writes the author, we are “using the language of political disagreement, judicial procedure, or partisan discussion to describe something that was crushing the system that such terminology was invented to describe.” Against that, Gessen suggests, we now have an administration for which words hold no reality, advancing the idea that “alternative facts” are fine but professing dismay when one calls them lies. The step-by-step degradation of democratic institutions that follows is a modern-day rejoinder to the fact that more than half a dozen years separated the Reichstag fire from World War II. That’s a big buffer of time in which to admit all manner of corruption, and all manner of corruption is what we’ve been seeing: Gessen reminds us about Mick Mulvaney’s accepting handsome gifts from the payday-loan industry he was supposed to regulate and Ben Carson’s attempt to stock his office with a $31,000 dining-room set. Yet corruption’s not the right word, writes the author, since Trump and company are quite open and even boastful about what used to be a matter of shame and duplicity. The real tragedy, it seems, is that they have been so successful in creating what the author calls a “new, smaller American society,” one that willfully excludes the Other. Many writers have chronicled the Trump administration’s missteps and crimes, but few as concisely as Gessen, and her book belongs on the shelf alongside Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny and Amy Siskind’s The List as a record of how far we have fallen.
Gessen is a Suetonius for our time, documenting the death of the old America while holding out slim hope for its restoration.Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-18893-4
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
A rousing, suspenseful adventure tale.
A harrowing expedition to Antarctica, recounted by Departures senior features editor Sancton, who has reported from every continent on the planet.
On Aug. 16, 1897, the steam whaler Belgica set off from Belgium with young Adrien de Gerlache as commandant. Thus begins Sancton’s riveting history of exploration, ingenuity, and survival. The commandant’s inexperienced, often unruly crew, half non-Belgian, included scientists, a rookie engineer, and first mate Roald Amundsen, who would later become a celebrated polar explorer. After loading a half ton of explosive tonite, the ship set sail with 23 crew members and two cats. In Rio de Janeiro, they were joined by Dr. Frederick Cook, a young, shameless huckster who had accompanied Robert Peary as a surgeon and ethnologist on an expedition to northern Greenland. In Punta Arenas, four seamen were removed for insubordination, and rats snuck onboard. In Tierra del Fuego, the ship ran aground for a while. Sancton evokes a calm anxiety as he chronicles the ship’s journey south. On Jan. 19, 1898, near the South Shetland Islands, the crew spotted the first icebergs. Rough waves swept someone overboard. Days later, they saw Antarctica in the distance. Glory was “finally within reach.” The author describes the discovery and naming of new lands and the work of the scientists gathering specimens. The ship continued through a perilous, ice-littered sea, as the commandant was anxious to reach a record-setting latitude. On March 6, the Belgica became icebound. The crew did everything they could to prepare for a dark, below-freezing winter, but they were wracked with despair, suffering headaches, insomnia, dizziness, and later, madness—all vividly capture by Sancton. The sun returned on July 22, and by March 1899, they were able to escape the ice. With a cast of intriguing characters and drama galore, this history reads like fiction and will thrill fans of Endurance and In the Kingdom of Ice.
A rousing, suspenseful adventure tale.Pub Date: May 4, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-984824-33-2
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Jan. 29, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2021
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