British comedienne and classics lover Haynes (The Great Escape, 2007) presents a wonderfully whimsical yet instructional view of Greco-Roman history.
The author fuses educational narrative and jocular commentary to guide the reader through aspects of ancient life still of interest today: politics, law, philosophy, religion, the role of women, the urban-rural dichotomy, entertainment and money, among others. The idea that the past bears upon the present often becomes a meaningless abstraction, but Haynes offers practical examples of this aphorism with welcome wit and a wink. Classics scholars are unlikely to learn anything new—the author clearly writes for a general audience—but they will surely chuckle at her candid accounts of celebrated ancients, especially “Rome's most articulate grouch, Juvenal.” Haynes sets the record straight on topics as diverse as the nature of gladiatorial salutes and the unexpected origin of “Who watches the watchmen?”, while providing illuminating context for controversial issues, like slavery and Roman views on Christians and Jews. She adds personality to simplistically clichéd historical figures such as Plato, Cicero and Nero. Her writing is speculative at times, necessarily so given the nature of her sources—ancient writers can be frustratingly biased and limited in scope. On rare occasions, the author takes it too far—e.g., her confidence in the solution to Socrates’ enigmatic last words. But such examples are limited, and most often Haynes' more unsubstantiated ideas are inquisitively phrased and constructively provocative. Will have readers grabbing for the classics.
Pub Date: May 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-59020-637-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Overlook
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2011
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
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
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