That said, this is certainly an efficient and colorful overview of a wide spectrum of enigmas throughout history, many of...
A well-researched, deftly written, if somehow lightweight overview of history’s open questions.
Aron (Unsolved Mysteries of American History, 1997) ranges across the millennia to cull 30 perplexing incidents, using his depictions of these conundrums to delve into appropriate social and historical backgrounds and to present unified portraits of confusing, ill-recorded interludes. In brief chapters ranging from “Were the Neanderthals Our Ancestors?” to “Was Gorbachev Part of the August Coup?,” Aron examines the unanswered questions surrounding the incident under scrutiny and explores the various competing theories that have developed over time, reaching back to a variety of often obscure sources and thinkers. Thus, in asking whether Mozart was poisoned, Aron considers the likely suspects—the jealous composer Salieri, the Freemasons—before concluding that most likely the “bleeding” techniques of contemporary physicians contributed to his death. More abstract archaeological riddles (such as the mysteries concerning the authorship of Stonehenge, the Pyramids, the Easter Island statues, and the actual location of ancient Troy) are dealt with by a careful inventory of the theories that have been advocated over the centuries (and which were usually disproved by succeeding generations of ponderers). Grisly contemporary mysteries appear too, such as “Could the Titanic Have Been Saved?” (depicting the evidently craven behavior of the California’s captain) and “Did Hitler Murder His Niece?” (which explores whether Hitler’s strange demands drove his niece to suicide, and what personal secrets, if any, are here revealed about his spiral into evil). The brief essays are bolstered by the inclusion of rare illustrations and annotated lists of recommended primary texts. Although the author’s is amusing and precise and gleans greater conclusions from each mystery, the very brevity of his chapters limits the effectiveness of his gambit—as the various historical conundrums seem to run together.
That said, this is certainly an efficient and colorful overview of a wide spectrum of enigmas throughout history, many of which (“Did Jesus Die on the Cross?”) remain wellsprings of controversy and should appeal to readers with more curiosity than time.Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2000
ISBN: 0-471-35190-3
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Wiley
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2000
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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