An admirable, mildly revisionist update on a widely misunderstood king.
The 2012 discovery of Richard III’s remains produced a flurry of accounts of the famous Shakespearean villain whose short reign ended in the battle that launched the Tudor dynasty. In this latest, British historian Jones (After Hitler: The Last Days of the Second World War in Europe, 2015, etc.) rocks no boats and agrees with most modern scholars that Richard (1452-1485) was not such a bad fellow.
Richard III lived during the War of the Roses, a highly unstable, violent period in British history. His father died in battle in 1460 after almost achieving the crown, which went to Richard’s brother, Edward IV, who reigned from 1461 to 1483. Richard served him more or less loyally until his death, when he revived an old accusation that Edward was illegitimate, making Richard himself the legitimate heir. Enjoying considerable support among the nobility and parliament, he was crowned three months later. Despite the absence of proof, most scholars believe Richard murdered Edward’s sons (“the princes in the Tower”), but killing rival claimants, even as children, was not unknown in that era. Another rival, Henry Tudor (later Henry VII), had only a distant claim; his bumbling invasion and shocking victory against superior forces continue to bewitch historians. Jones tries his hand, and the result depends heavily on speculation, hints from contemporary documents, and parallels with other medieval battles. This is unavoidable due to the dearth of evidence. The location of the battlefield itself remains controversial; new findings reveal that Richard was not severely hunchbacked but do not answer major questions. “It is a more untidy and unsettling reality than the caricature with which we are familiar,” writes the author.
An admirable, mildly revisionist update on a widely misunderstood king.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-60598-859-7
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Pegasus
Review Posted Online: May 18, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2015
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 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
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
© Copyright 2024 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.
