In Hatchepsut (1996), Tyldesley (Archaeology/Liverpool Univ., England) brought to life an obscure female ruler of ancient Egypt’s 18th Dynasty. Here she does the same for a legendary woman of the same period—the queen of monotheist pharaoh Akhenaten. Nefertiti (literally meaning, “a beautiful woman has come”) became famous with the 1912 discovery by archaeologists of a breathtaking painted bust of her. What little was known of her story suggested dramatic potential: the wife of an intellectual ruler who rejected Egypt’s traditional polytheistic cult in favor of an austere monotheistic religion, Nefertiti was a central figure in the capital city, Akhetaten (now Amarna), founded by her husband. But her life, and his, ended with a mysterious oblivion. As if they had merely vanished, records made no mention of the royal couple. Without resolving the cluster of historic mysteries surrounding Nefertiti, Tyldesley evokes the turbulent reign of Akhenaten, whose cult threatened the power of Egypt’s priesthood and undermined the kingdom’s customary religion. Marshaling archaeological and textual evidence, the author depicts Akhenaten’s family as close-knit, with their idyll interrupted by the sudden death of the couple’s daughters, attributed by Tyldesley to the plague. Reviewing some of the scholarly theories for Nefertiti’s disappearance—that she grew too powerful, ruled Egypt in her own right, or committed a heinous crime and was banished—Tyldesley concludes that insufficient evidence exists to support these theories. More likely, as his consort, Nefertiti simply shared in Akhenaten’s fate when successor Horemheb, a traditionalist, tried to eradicate all memory of the monotheist pharaoh and his descendants. A thoughtful and well-researched re-creation of an extraordinary ancient personality. (16 pages b&w photos, 38 figures, 2 maps)
Pub Date: March 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-670-86998-8
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1999
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
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
© 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.
