In this amusing, rah-rah pep rally for the imminent crush of summer tourists, the author shows that there is much more to...
The mayor of London demonstrates that understanding his city requires an acquaintance with key historical personages, from Alfred the Great to Keith Richards.
On the eve of the 2012 Summer Olympics, the author provides a lively thematic guide to the city’s historical evolution as represented by the legacy of notable Londoners, ancient and modern, from the Romans who overran the city to the great statesman who staunchly defended it from attack, Winston Churchill. Johnson has served as mayor since 2008, previously the editor of The Spectator and thus a trained, amiable journalist. With an engaging, felicitous tone, the author obviously enjoys offering his account of what the English have done best, from spreading the good word in the form of the King James Bible to parliamentary democracy and habeas corpus to the marvels of the English language. Johnson pays tribute to numerous illustrious Londoners, some better known than others—e.g., the early avenger Boudica, the first in a tradition of powerful female leaders; a previous mayor, 15th-century financier Richard Whittington; a fabulously inventive, now-forgotten genius of the 17th century, Robert Hooke; eccentric civil libertarian John Wilkes; Samuel Johnson and his lexicographic wit; saintly nurses Florence Nightingale and Mary Seacole, who challenged notions of hygiene and ventilation in the treatment of disease; and W.T. Stead, inventor of tabloid journalism with his work on the Pall Mall Gazette in the mid 19th century. Along the way there are shorter bios of some incredibly important innovators and inventors, such as Sir John Harington, godson of Queen Elizabeth I and fashioner of the flush toilet of which she was so fond; Beau Brummel and his now-ubiquitous men’s suit; and Denis Johnson and his significant modifications on the bicycle in 19th-century London.
In this amusing, rah-rah pep rally for the imminent crush of summer tourists, the author shows that there is much more to London than Big Ben, London Bridge and William Shakespeare.Pub Date: June 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-59448-747-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2012
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
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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