Fiennes does his ancestors justice with this fascinating and immensely readable narrative of Agincourt.
A personal history commemorating the 600th anniversary of the Battle of Agincourt by a direct descendant of nobility who fought on both sides of the battle.
Few events in history have had such a lasting impact as Agincourt. On that fateful day exactly 600 years ago this Oct. 25, armies allied to King Henry V of England and King Charles VI of France met in the decisive battle of the Hundred Years’ War. Though the war continued for several years after Agincourt, the English victory at Agincourt ensured, through Henry’s later marriage to Charles’ daughter Katherine, future stability and equitable relations between France and England, conditions that would provide the foundation for the emergence of both countries’ modern national identities. Though there is no shortage of historical analyses of the battle and war, famed explorer and prolific author Fiennes (Cold: Extreme Adventures at the Lowest Temperatures on Earth, 2013, etc.) provides a unique perspective of medieval history as a direct ancestor of nobility that fought for both the English and French at Agincourt. To understand how such a seeming contradiction could be true, the author begins his conversational and well-paced history at the Battle of Hastings in 1066, in which William of Normandy’s conquest of Britain enmeshed the politics of the French crown with the English. As a result, William’s victory set in motion the series of events that would lead directly to the Hundred Years’ War. As for Fiennes, whose lineage can be traced all the way back to Charlemagne, his ancestors controlled the Boulogne region of France and were allied to William. Receiving patronage for their loyalty, they controlled areas of both England and their native France. However, subsequent kings tested allegiances, and eventually, Fiennes’ ancestors would be divided by ensuing conflicts before facing off at Agincourt.
Fiennes does his ancestors justice with this fascinating and immensely readable narrative of Agincourt.Pub Date: Dec. 15, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-60598-915-0
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Pegasus
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2015
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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