Lively, opinionated, and dense with detail, Magnusson's tome belongs on the shelves of anyone interested in matters Scottish.
Almost as weighty as the Stone of Destiny, this vast, superb history relates Scotland's past over a dozen millennia.
Devotees of BBC America and the History Channel may know Magnusson, familiar on UK airwaves as a historian of the British Isles. The Icelandic transplant, an archaeologist and prolific author (The Vikings, 2001, etc.) and translator (The Fish Can Sing, 2001, etc.), has a greater sense of Scottish history than do most natives. He is thus admirably suited to the difficult task of condensing Scotland's history—made dauntingly complicated by family rivalries, contending clans, and ceaseless tensions with sometime-conqueror, England—into a coherent narrative. Magnusson begins by promising to undo a few “cherished conceptions” about Scottish history, while advancing a few of his own. Along the way he considers such oddities as whether the tartan is a comparatively modern invention and whether Macbeth and Thorfinn the Mighty, the Norse earl of Orkney, might not have been one and the same. More seriously, he closely examines the effects of the 18th-century union with England and the cost and benefits to both countries, and the apparent inability of Scots throughout history to unite without betraying one another. Magnusson takes care to set events on the ground, giving driving directions to the remotest places, so that readers can see battlegrounds and ruins for themselves, and he lingers over curious artifacts (for instance, a box made of the wood from a great tree called Wallace's Oak and given to George Washington, “the Wallace of America”). His narrative ends in 1999, when a Scottish parliament convened for the first time in almost 300 years, and the legend-shrouded Stone of Destiny was returned to Edinburgh from Westminster Abbey—whereupon, Magnusson wryly remarks, this talisman of Scottish nationhood “lost all its potency as a symbol and became just another ordinary and undistinguished chunk of rock.”
Lively, opinionated, and dense with detail, Magnusson's tome belongs on the shelves of anyone interested in matters Scottish.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-87113-798-4
Page Count: 752
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An enjoyable slice of 20th-century music journalism almost certain to provide something for most readers, no matter one’s...
Music journalist and musician Wald (Talking 'Bout Your Mama: The Dozens, Snaps, and the Deep Roots of Rap, 2014, etc.) focuses on one evening in music history to explain the evolution of contemporary music, especially folk, blues, and rock.
The date of that evening is July 25, 1965, at the Newport Folk Festival, where there was an unbelievably unexpected occurrence: singer/songwriter Bob Dylan, already a living legend in his early 20s, overriding the acoustic music that made him famous in favor of electronically based music, causing reactions ranging from adoration to intense resentment among other musicians, DJs, and record buyers. Dylan has told his own stories (those stories vary because that’s Dylan’s character), and plenty of other music journalists have explored the Dylan phenomenon. What sets Wald's book apart is his laser focus on that one date. The detailed recounting of what did and did not occur on stage and in the audience that night contains contradictory evidence sorted skillfully by the author. He offers a wealth of context; in fact, his account of Dylan's stage appearance does not arrive until 250 pages in. The author cites dozens of sources, well-known and otherwise, but the key storylines, other than Dylan, involve acoustic folk music guru Pete Seeger and the rich history of the Newport festival, a history that had created expectations smashed by Dylan. Furthermore, the appearances on the pages by other musicians—e.g., Joan Baez, the Weaver, Peter, Paul, and Mary, Dave Van Ronk, and Gordon Lightfoot—give the book enough of an expansive feel. Wald's personal knowledge seems encyclopedic, and his endnotes show how he ranged far beyond personal knowledge to produce the book.
An enjoyable slice of 20th-century music journalism almost certain to provide something for most readers, no matter one’s personal feelings about Dylan's music or persona.Pub Date: July 25, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-236668-9
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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