Entertaining reading for British history buffs and budding archaeologists.
British editor Maiklem shares her obsession with the treasures she has found in the mud of the River Thames.
The author takes us on a tour from the end of the tidal Thames at Teddington down to the estuary at Lower Hope Point. As she notes, the tides dictate the course of her investigations. A mudlark, someone who “scavenges for usable debris in the mud of a river or harbor,” must know all of the permutations of the tides throughout the year. The author’s discoveries range from Roman coins to the ubiquitous clay pipes and pieces of tile and pottery to unexploded ordnance from World War II. Mudlarks are easy to spot, with their dirty boots, knee pads, latex gloves, and waterproof suits smeared with mud. Maiklem explains how they rely on luck but also have the patience and time to devote to their craft. Their best guides, she writes, are old maps, especially the Agas map of 1561, which presents a wealth of clues to population activity. Barge beds, wharves, and revetments deteriorate, dislodging the domestic refuse and rubble that filled them, an ever changing source of both banal and intriguing items. Some mudlarks use metal detectors while others dig. After the tides expose her finds, the author has to properly identify and preserve them; if they dry too fast, they could crumble. The author also discusses the role of government in her endeavor, as a permit is necessary and discoveries must be reported to the Museum of London. In 1957, the Natural History Museum declared the river biologically dead, and the cleanup has been ongoing ever since. In the 1970s, fish returned to the river, but there are still dangerous microbes lurking, and London’s storm drains dump raw sewage into the river after heavy rains. Throughout the narrative, Maiklem’s imagination and infectious enthusiasm make for a lovely fantasy world where “the tiniest of objects…tell the greatest stories.”
Entertaining reading for British history buffs and budding archaeologists.Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-63149-496-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Liveright/Norton
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2019
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 Yorker staff 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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