An imagination-stimulating work in which the past seems “to dissolve and reshape itself.”
Robb (The Discovery of Middle Earth: Mapping the Lost World of the Celts, 2013, etc.) uses his vast knowledge of Celtic history, languages, and geography to create a fascinating book of history and adventure.
Regarding the strange story of what is called the “Debatable Land,” the author turns to writings both ancient and modern as he applies archaeological methods to history. This 33,000-acre site is the oldest detectable territorial division in Great Britain. It is devoid of archaeological evidence between the Roman period and the 1500s, which leads Robb to posit that perhaps it was just uninhabitable. Located northeast of the Solway Firth above Cumbria’s Lake District, it was a no-man’s land, a buffer neither Scottish nor English, and open to murder and mayhem by parliamentary decrees of both countries. Until nearly the 1600s, no buildings or cultivation were allowed, and cattle could pasture only between sunrise and sunset. Cattle thieves plied their trade in a reasonably civilized manner governed by March law, a code common and efficient to both sides and unique to the area. It governed the use of hostages to prevent reprisals, established the traditional days of truce, and ensured compliance. On the truce days, livestock owners would receive the value of the stolen animals in money, corn, or merchandise. Throughout the book, readers will be impressed with Robb’s archival digging, especially as he turns to Ptolemy’s 150 C.E. map of Britain—not just the source, but the fact that the author corrected the grid of Ptolemy’s map, which was inaccurate. Readers will have fun following along with Robb’s intriguing historical journey of discovery through this magical realm. In a series of appendices, the author provides detailed maps of different areas of the region as well as a timeline that runs from 43 C.E. to 1793.
An imagination-stimulating work in which the past seems “to dissolve and reshape itself.”Pub Date: June 12, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-393-28532-1
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2018
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
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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