Miles obviously has a great time recounting the history of the Riviera, making the book an enjoyable, absorbing read.
For a small slice of geography, the French Riviera has cast a long shadow, and it is one of wealth, style, and decadence.
Miles, the author of a string of well-received books, describes The Once Upon a Time World as “the second volume of an informal trilogy dedicated to phenomenal places created by strangers”; the first was St Petersburg: Three Centuries of Murderous Desire. The Riviera is a strip of land, including the microstate of Monaco, nestled between the azure waters of the Mediterranean and the stunning foothills of the Alps. It was Englishman Lord Brougham who started the show in 1835, with the idea of building a health resort for the well-to-do. The plan was successful, and over time the guest list extended to artists and writers, many of whom liked the sexual freedom available. Picasso, Coco Chanel, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Cole Porter, and Stravinsky spent considerable time there. Even Karl Marx, and later Harpo Marx, put in an appearance. The lush casinos attracted high rollers, and American money and celebrities poured in. The Riviera fared badly during World War II, but there was a resurgence in the 1950s and 1960s, with Hollywood stars leading the way. Grace Kelly married into Monaco royalty, sealing the bond. But the good times could not last. Eventually, overdevelopment turned much of the scenery into concrete, and the area became increasingly known for crime, corruption, and money laundering. Tourism is the main business of the area, but it runs mainly on nostalgia and pleasant weather. Miles suggests that a recovery is possible, but he sounds more hopeful than convincing. Looking back, the long heyday of the Riviera seems like a fantasy story, replete with colorful and unlikely characters. And it’s a story that, perhaps, starts with “once upon a time, there was a beautiful beach….”
Miles obviously has a great time recounting the history of the Riviera, making the book an enjoyable, absorbing read.Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9781639364954
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Pegasus
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 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
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
