An intriguing, if at times over-reaching work.
A panoramic study of Western history, designed to draw a connection between Christianity and the rise of democracy and capitalism.
Stark (Social Sciences/Baylor Univ.) takes the reader on a selective tour of Western history. The title concept of reason is certainly brought up throughout, but it is overshadowed by the roles of Christianity and personal freedom. Stark begins with a question: What caused the West to take such a dominant role in world history? His answer is complex, and he opens by examining the role of Christianity, which facilitated a particularly forward-thinking and progressive worldview. It encouraged adherents to utilize reason in examining scripture and matters of theology. The Church’s positive view of human progress, coupled with reason, led to unparalleled advances in technology and science. Stark then moves on to the rise of capitalism, which he contends began within early monastic communities and came to fruition in Northern Italian city-states by about the 12th century. From Italy, capitalism spread to Northern Europe. Echoing modern libertarian authors, Stark points out that economic success was consistently born out of freer societies; command economies over the past two millennia may have often wielded power, but they did so at the expense of their people's well-being and of technological progress. These trends then spilled over into the New World. In making his arguments, Stark utilizes plenty of solid research. However, he also expands great effort on matters that get in the way of his point, such as devoting an entire chapter to convincing the reader that the “Dark Ages” were anything but dark.
An intriguing, if at times over-reaching work.Pub Date: Dec. 13, 2005
ISBN: 1-4000-6228-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2005
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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