A collection of classical stories that could provide source material for a series of vivid graphic-literature adaptations.
Capsule bios of classic gods and heroes, with lots of detail but little poetry.
Admitting that his aim is more “modest” than a thematic exploration or a work of cultural criticism, Freeman (Classics/Luther Coll.; Alexander the Great, 2011, etc.) writes, “I simply want to retell the great myths of Greece and Rome for modern readers while remaining as faithful as possible to the original sources.” In scope, style and organization, the work is encyclopedic, whether profiling the gods or condensing epics (“Argonauts,” “Odysseus”) into separate chapters. The structure disrupts any possibility of flow and results in occasional repetition. Zeus naturally begins the section on the gods, but he can hardly be contained there, as he continues to reappear in subsequent sections on goddesses, heroes, lovers, etc. Some readers may find it difficult to keep straight who’s related to whom and how, while the accounts of rapes, murders, incest, seductions, sacrifices and transformations lose power when there are so many per page. More interesting are the etymological illuminations, the connection between the playful and sexually goatish Pan and the “uncontrollable fear” he inspired in some, “better known as pan-ic.” Or the fact that the alternate name for Orion is Urion, or “urine boy.” All of the greatest hits of classical antiquity are here—Hercules and the labors, Orpheus and Eurydice, Oedipus and his mother—but the prose rarely rises above matter-of-fact pedestrian, except through literary allusion (“Hell hath no fury like a witch scorned”). Only at the end, after the transition from Greek myth to Roman, do we get some sense of what it all might mean: “The long age of monarchy stretching back to Aeneas and the Trojan War, to the Greek tradition and the earliest tales, had at last come to an end. The classical world now entered the age of history, though the ancient myths that so shaped their lives—and still shape ours—were never forgotten.”
A collection of classical stories that could provide source material for a series of vivid graphic-literature adaptations.Pub Date: Jan. 3, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4516-0997-4
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 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 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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