An erudite and breathtaking, if sometimes vexing, review of how our waning millennium might seem from the perspective of ``some galactic museum of the future.'' An American or European reader of the 1990s will be forgiven for thinking of this millennium as one of Western preeminence. This is a myopic viewpoint, contends historian Fern†ndez-Armesto (Columbus, 1991, etc.). Of the major civilizations in the year 1000, the relatively advanced Chinese-dominated civilizations of the Far East seem in retrospect most likely to have influenced world history. Fern†ndez-Armesto argues that by the 15th century, each of the four major civilizationsChina, Latin Christendom, Eastern Christendom, and Islamwas prepared for expansion. The expeditions of French, English, Spanish, Dutch, and Portuguese conquerors are depicted as a part of a worldwide trend toward empire-building that encompassed not only the major civilizations but also cultures of South America and the sub-Sahara. Fern†ndez- Armesto asserts that from the 16th century through the 19th, Europeans and Euro-Americans built an ``Atlantic civilization'' that, although frail, achieved dominance over natural resources and had transformative effects all over the world. When, after its brief hegemony, Atlantic civilization started to unravel, decolonization and ``counter-colonization'' (immigration and cultural domination of Atlantic countries by members of former colonies) ensued. Finally, the resurgent Islamic and Pacific civilizations are challenging the supremacy of Atlantic civilization. Although he takes the reader on a richly detailed, exciting journey through history, Fern†ndez-Armesto gets a bit too caught up with his Atlantic/Pacific categories (at one point he even classifies the economically vital state of California as part of his Pacific civilization) and ultimately mars his survey with some thinly reasoned speculations about the future. If his study has shown anything, it is that such facile predictions are likely to be wrong. Nonetheless, a scholarly, entertaining, and astonishing look at the enormous distance humankind has traveled in a historical instant. (400 b&w photos and illustrations, not seen) (Book-of-the- Month Club alternate selection/History Book Club main selection)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-684-80361-5
Page Count: 864
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1995
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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