A comprehensive record jam-packed with visuals.
The director of the British Museum tells the compelling story of a traumatized country through objects and places that represent the enduring strength and hope of the people.
MacGregor (A History of the World in 100 Objects, 2011, etc.) examines the multifaceted makeup of what was formerly an enormously fragmented set of local narratives before an actual German identity emerged, most iconically with the Gutenberg Bible of the 1450s, which united the Germans in language and through which “Germany decisively affected the course of world history.” The author sees German history framed around "four great traumas” on German soil, each seared in the national memory by certain profound artifacts (such as the Brandenburg Gate and the rebuilt Reichstag): the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648); the invasion of Rhineland and Western Germany by French Revolutionary forces in 1792; the defeat of the Prussian armies by Napoleon and his triumphal entry into Berlin in 1806; and the devastation by the Third Reich. Somewhat erratically, MacGregor moves forward and backward in the chronology. He looks deeply at the early history of the wildly far-flung Holy Roman Empire via cities that once resonated in the German cultural memory—e.g., Königsberg and Prague, home of Kant and Kafka, respectively; and Strasbourg, notable for its stunning cathedral, which struck the visiting young Goethe as “what it meant to him to be German.” Objects such as royal coins, metalwork, and “white-gold” porcelain from Dresden tell much of that story. MacGregor traces the evolution of German identity through depictions of woods in literature (Grimm Brothers) and in painting; the image of the oak and iron cross, both later appropriated by the Nazis; and the creation of the flag and national anthem out of the revolutionary fervor of 1848 that celebrated constitutional freedom. Most importantly, the author finds post–World War II Germany hyperattuned to the need for memorials to victims of terror and oppression—e.g., via the work of painter and printmaker Käthe Kollwitz.
A comprehensive record jam-packed with visuals.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2015
ISBN: 978-1101875667
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: July 7, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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