A simultaneously propulsive and nuanced account that hums on the page.
A thorough, largely sympathetic account of the career of one of the ancient world’s most indelible and complex figures.
Freeman, the chair in humanities at Pepperdine whose more than 20 books include biographies of Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar, vividly, almost cinematically, brings to life the career of Hannibal Barca, the great but ill-fated Carthaginian general whose tactical and strategic brilliance is still studied today. The author draws from both of the two most important sources of information on his subject’s life (and legend), but he favors the more balanced, detailed account of Polybius over that of Livy, the Roman historian most hostile to the African leader. Freeman also gives full credit to the recent work of scholars who have helped illuminate Hannibal’s character and legacy as well as the world in which he lived. Despite the Roman chroniclers who demonized him, tradition holds that Hannibal, though capable of wholesale slaughter, was, by the standards of the day, generous in battle and humane in his treatment of his men and war animals, with an extraordinary gift for eliciting loyalty. In defeat, having turned his energies to rebuilding Carthage’s economy, he proved an able administrator. “Even the Romans, in their fear and hatred of Hannibal, could not help but admire his determination, brilliance, and ultimately his humanity. We should do nothing less,” writes the author, though he refrains from romanticizing his subject. In a fascinating speculation on what might have happened had Hannibal defeated Rome, Freeman also disputes many modern scholars’ belief that history unfolds solely from economic and cultural forces, insisting that “certain individuals at certain moments in time can change everything with a single decision.” And Hannibal profoundly changed Rome. The author gives Hannibal’s remarkable campaigns much credit for compelling Rome to alter its societal construction, becoming an empire that, for better or worse, would change the world.
A simultaneously propulsive and nuanced account that hums on the page.Pub Date: March 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-64313-871-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Pegasus
Review Posted Online: Oct. 29, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2021
HISTORY | HISTORICAL & MILITARY | ANCIENT | MILITARY | WORLD
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
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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