Those enthralled by Rome will find this a worthy companion, if one that might prompt nostalgia for golden ages of yore.
Sweeping history over three millennia of the center of the ancient world.
Rome is famously known as the city of seven hills. But, writes London-based historian Addis in opening, “why stop at seven?” There are more: the Janiculum, the Pincian, Monte Mario, the Vatican, and so forth, yet the count has held at seven since time immemorial. So it is that the entire history of Rome, republic and empire and beyond, has been punctuated by set pieces and legends, some of which the author debunks, others of which he illuminates. For instance, in telling the story of the foundation of the ancient republic after the overthrow of the Etruscan kings, he nicely notes that Lucius Junius Brutus emerged victorious, having hidden behind a last name that means “stupid.” “Up stepped Brutus, casting off the pretense of foolishness he had worn for so long,” Addis spryly writes after setting up a bloody scene, after which Brutus swore that Rome would not see a king again. So it was for a few hundred years until the rise of the emperors, who started off strong but devolved into gangsters and tyrants, “too busy with enemies from outside Rome’s borders to worry about enemies within.” Consequently, Christianity, its early adherents true enemies of the Roman state, was able to take hold. Addis writes with due admiration of Cola di Rienzo, the exponent of “a well-established tradition of Italian communal government” after the revival of the Senate in 1143, who recapitulated the ancient struggle between commoner and nobility and wound up the worse in the bargain. The author takes readers to the walls of the city in the 19th century, where "patrician ladies,” students, and militia alike joined to battle French invaders. The narrative sometimes runs a bit long, but Addis writes clearly and effectively, though without the flair of a Mary Beard or Luigi Barzini.
Those enthralled by Rome will find this a worthy companion, if one that might prompt nostalgia for golden ages of yore.Pub Date: Nov. 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-68177-542-5
Page Count: 608
Publisher: Pegasus
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2018
HISTORY | ANCIENT | 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
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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