The distillation of years of research, study, reflection and writing — and the fulfillment of the promise of The Culture of Cities, The City in History will challenge, disturb and inform all who come to grips with its thesis and development. Virtually, here- through the central theme of the city- is world history. It is far more than the study of urban culture through the ages. It is a revitalization of civilizations- with focus particularly on the Minoan and Mycenaean cultures of ancient Greece, the age of Pericles, the disintegration of the Hellenistic period, "richer in science than in wisdom", and the deterioration when Rome took over. He explores those factors that made the Greek cities unique- the contribution brought to urban culture by Olympia, Delphi, Cos- the decline of even respect towards the gods. To this reader this is the most revealing section, for he approaches half-known facts and endows them with fresh vision and interpretation. The nature of the ancient city sets the note, until the concept of perpetual war and conquest was evolved, never to be lost. His portrayal of the Roman city concept, too, is different from the accepted one, as is their contribution to world history. Almost cynical he seems as he itemizes Rome at its best, its worst, and in survival with Byzantium. The emergence of the Christian culture, the role of monasticism, the struggle of the Middle Ages against the barbarians and how the urban movement was reborn out of insecurity. We then see Romanesque Europe, we study medieval town planning, the Baroque of the 16th and 17th centuries and the mercantile capitalism that emerged supreme. His final section forms a chant of dismay and discouragement- but not, finally, of despair, over the advance of urbanism gluttonously embracing all outlying districts, turning men into machines. But in the shadows he sees glimmers of hope, that the very instruments of our destruction can be turned around to be instruments of salvation, and that the "One World Man" can be the goal of the future city:- "that of creating a visible regional and civic structure designed to make man at home with his deeper self and his larger world". So closes one of the great achievements in social studies of our times.
Pub Date: April 12, 1961
ISBN: 0156180359
Page Count: 788
Publisher: Harcourt, Brace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1961
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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