A noteworthy piece of scholarship giving context and depth to key composers and their work.
A respected cultural historian delves into music that serves as “a carrier of memory for a post-Holocaust world.”
Not all memorials are made of chiseled stone. Some of the most enduring are evocative pieces of music, often integrating spoken narratives. Eichler, chief classical music critic at the Boston Globe, focuses on four major composers of the period following World War II: Richard Strauss, Arnold Schoenberg, Dmitri Shostakovich, and Benjamin Britten. Refreshingly, the author makes no attempt to hide their flaws. Strauss made compromises with the Nazi regime, although in the end he admitted the depth of his failings—as demonstrated in his masterful Metamorphosen, which also commemorated the victims of the war. In many of his works, Shostakovich complied with the Stalinist precept that art must serve the state, but in his later symphonies, he radically changed course, condemning Hitler's and Stalin's atrocities with equal force. Schoenberg struggled to find a balance between his German cultural roots and his Jewish heritage, a duality reflected in his calibrated dissonance and innovative scaling. A Survivor From Warsaw is a powerful example of music as memorial. Britten, a committed pacifist, was conflicted by the idea of commemorative music, concerned that it would seem triumphalist. However, in War Requiem, he captured the complexity of war and the importance of humane responses to it. Eichler's examination of these artists and their works is authoritative, but the book is not an easy read. The text is dense, and some of the author’s detours, such as his lengthy discourse on Mendelsohn, do not seem to fit his theme. He also assumes that readers will have a detailed grasp of classical music. Consequently, this book is not for everyone, but those who choose to accept the challenge will find it fascinating and, in its own way, inspiring.
A noteworthy piece of scholarship giving context and depth to key composers and their work.Pub Date: Aug. 29, 2023
ISBN: 9780525521716
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2023
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
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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