An engaging journey to the distant past.
A lively overview of a medium that was central to public and private life in the ancient world.
Ecologist Gaudet (Papyrus: The Plant that Changed the World, 2014, etc.) expands on the research that informed his first book by investigating the history of paper from the end of the Stone Age to 1000 C.E. During that period, paper was made from papyrus that grew in swamps around the Nile, the only place that the reedy plant could flourish in quantity. For 4,000 years, therefore, Egypt had “uninterrupted and exclusive control” over the production of papyrus paper, the longest monopoly in world history. The medium “was the property of the king, since paper manufacture was at that time a royal prerogative.” It was vitally important both economically and culturally. In agriculture, which economists deem “the real basis for Egypt’s greatness,” tracking production depended on “lightweight paper to process and manage data sets.” Unlike tablets made of lead, copper, wax, or clay or writing surfaces made of tree bark or leather, papyrus paper “weighed almost nothing” and yet was extremely durable. Besides record-keeping, papyrus made its way into pyramids and coffins as funerary scrolls containing texts known as the Book of the Dead. These writings, Gaudet explains, were “designed in consultation with priests to ensure that the deceased came alive after death.” Organizing the book into three sections, the author first establishes paper as “a key element in global advancement” and dissemination of information. He notes that after the discovery of the Rosetta Stone, Egyptmania raged across Europe and Britain, sending thousands of Victorian collectors to pillage tombs and temples in search of ancient artifacts. A middle section details how paper and ink are made and scrolls are assembled, and a last section looks at the environmental changes and technical innovations—such as vellum, Chinese paper, and rag paper—that relegated papyrus paper to what it is now: a souvenir for tourists.
An engaging journey to the distant past.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-68177-853-2
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Pegasus
Review Posted Online: July 15, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
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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