An engaging work that will no doubt prompt enthusiastic visits to castles around Britain.
Enchanting journey through feudal England in the wake of Norman castle building.
Before William the Conquerer arrived in 1066, why did the English lack castles while the French had them in abundance? A historian specializing in the Middle Ages, Morris (King John: Treachery, Tyranny and the Road to Magna Carta, 2015, etc.) imparts some fascinating information in this accessible study for readers, leading us from one noted English castle to the next without an overabundance of technical construction detail. As the author defines them, castles were fortresses as well as residences. Indeed, in England, after the Viking invasions of the ninth century, the king did not permit private fortifications; rather, he was in favor of the communal burh, or borough, where everyone lived within a walled community. On the other hand, after the Viking invasions in France, specifically in Normandy, the French experienced political fragmentation, and powerful men took “the matter of defense into their own hands.” The Normans brought their motte-and-bailey style to England; before the use of stone, castles were constructed with high earthen walls, ditches, and wooden buildings, as illustrated in the Bayeux Tapestry. Soon the countryside was dotted by such motte-and-bailey castles, built by William’s supporters; the author estimates that around 500 castles were built by the Normans in England during his reign. William’s Tower of London was the prototypical “keep,” made of stone and more expensive to build but able to expand bigger, stronger, and taller. Other fine examples of keeps are the Rochester, Harlech, and Bodiam castles, appearing here in helpful photos. Edward I’s invasion of Wales in the late 13th century prompted the construction of some massive, showy buildings, “tools of conquest,” such as the castles of Caernarfon and Beaumaris. Morris also depicts the “castle’s last stand” during the English civil war, when the doomed King Charles took refuge in the stately Raglan Castle in Wales.
An engaging work that will no doubt prompt enthusiastic visits to castles around Britain.Pub Date: April 4, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-68177-359-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Pegasus
Review Posted Online: Feb. 6, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
HISTORY | MILITARY | WORLD | GENERAL HISTORY
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
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