Chaffetz ably traces swathes of history across continents, underlining how horses made kingdoms and cultures.
Much of the story of human history rides on horseback, according to this appealing study.
“No animal has had as profound an impact on human history as the horse,” writes historian Chaffetz, author of A Journey Through Afghanistan, who provides convincing evidence for this view, tracking four millennia of history. The author’s primary focus is Eurasia and the vast empires of the Mongols and Mughals, although there are plenty of lively, relevant detours. Interestingly, horses were initially domesticated for milk and meat. Mare’s milk, when fermented into an alcoholic drink called ayraq, is still consumed widely by the people of the steppes. When humans discovered that they could ride horses, the first uses were for herding and hunting, but this quickly turned to warfare. With the right pasture conditions, horse populations grew quickly, and the army of Genghis Khan included more than 1 million of them. Chaffetz also delves into the use of horses in the Persian Empire, with Alexander the Great making great use of cavalry and chariots. Aside from military applications, the trading and selective breeding of horses led to important links between cultures. In western Europe, horses played a crucial role in social development, including in agriculture and transport, although overall numbers were limited by the shortage of open grasslands. The Spanish took horses to the New World, and there the equine population exploded. Several Native American tribes quickly incorporated horses into their cultures, as did later waves of white settlers. Chaffetz brings an authoritative tone to his complex tale, and he includes maps, illustrations, a glossary, and a particularly helpful timeline that runs from 20,000 B.C.E. into the mid-20th century. The result is a consistently engaging and highly informative narrative.
Chaffetz ably traces swathes of history across continents, underlining how horses made kingdoms and cultures.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781324051466
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: March 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2024
HISTORY | ANCIENT | MILITARY | EXPEDITIONS | WORLD | GENERAL HISTORY
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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