A comprehensive and unusual look at England’s most famous queen.
Fields (Shylock: His Own Story, 2015, etc.) tackles the knowns and unknowns of England’s Queen Elizabeth I (1533-1603) in this work of history.
Elizabeth I, aka “Gloriana” and “the Virgin Queen,” was a colorful figure at the center of an eventful period in English history who still manages to stimulate the popular imagination more than 400 years after her death. This wide-ranging biography’s first section is a breathless account that spans the entire Tudor dynasty from the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485 to the ascension of James I in 1603, with the requisite reiteration of Elizabeth’s rise to power, her completion of England’s break from the Catholic Church, the war with Spain, and her constantly evolving entourage of advisers, favorites, and paramours. The second section of the book, “Elizabethan Enigmas,” is organized by topic as Fields delves into the curios of Elizabeth’s life. Was she truly a virgin? Did she sanction the murder of the wife of nobleman Robert Dudley? What were her true thoughts on Catholicism? In other chapters, such as “Duplicity,” “Miserliness,” and “Piracy and Worse,” Fields introduces readers to aspects of the queen that they may not have heard before. The concision and comprehensiveness of the first section are impressive, and its brevity and quick pacing keep it from getting bogged down in minutiae the way that biographies of monarchs often do. Fields’ true interest seems to lie in the second section’s subject matter, though, and his enthusiasm is infectious. Without humoring outright conspiracy theories—he dismisses the idea that she wrote Shakespeare’s plays with the terse statement, “She did write well; but not that well”—Fields finds plenty of intrigues to challenge conventional notions of the queen. Twelve beautiful, full-color portraits from the National Portrait Gallery in London and a timeline of the queen’s life round out this volume. Its 450-plus pages belie what a quick read it actually is, making it a perfect primer for those interested in the “Good Queen Bess” but who may be intimidated by some of the longer tomes available.
A comprehensive and unusual look at England’s most famous queen.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2017
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 451
Publisher: Marmont Lane
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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 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
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
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