A vastly rich historical tapestry that puts ongoing struggles in a new perspective.
Throughout history, Central Asia has been a nexus of burgeoning trade in goods, people, and ideas.
Drawing on prodigious sources, Frankopan (The First Crusade: The Call from the East, 2012, etc.), director of the Oxford Centre for Byzantine Research, creates a sweeping, fascinating chronicle of world history focused on trade—in silk, spices, furs, gold, silver, slaves, and religion—in a vast region from the Mediterranean’s eastern shores to the Himalayas. What is now the Caucasus, Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan once served as the bridge between Europe and Asia, an area, the author writes, “on which the globe spun,” where thriving cities housed diverse populations speaking a “cauldron” of languages, where “the world’s great religions burst into life” and “great empires rose and fell.” Trade in silk is exemplary of the confluence of cultures: the shimmering fabric was “a cipher for exoticism and eroticism” but also suspicion and conflict. Some thought the diaphanous material was “disgraceful” and sought to outlaw it; others damned the high cost of such luxuries. Controversies arose over religions, as well. The Silk Roads “were crowded, as deities and cults, priests and local rulers jostled with each other,” with political implications: “a society protected and favored by the right god, or gods, thrived; those promising false idols....suffered.” Among the many colorful figures the author vividly portrays, Genghis Khan emerges as a strategic genius who became “the undisputed master of the Mongolian steppes by 1206.” Although the author acknowledges the Mongols’ brutality, he also argues that their investment in infrastructure benefited the region. Likewise, he sees an upside to the Black Plague, which was a “catalyst for [the] social and economic change” that led to Europe’s rise. Until the 16th century, though, Europe was “little more than a sideshow” compared with “titanic struggles” in Central Asia. Frankopan weaves together his many narrative strands with verve and impressive scholarship.
A vastly rich historical tapestry that puts ongoing struggles in a new perspective.Pub Date: Feb. 16, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-94632-9
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Oct. 31, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2015
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 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
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