A dense history that may lose readers not versed in Russian history, but for students and scholars, Plokhy continues to show...
A timely work of impeccable research that elucidates the Russian impulse toward regaining lost lands under a powerful myth of origins.
With Russia having recently moved aggressively into Ukraine and Crimea, the history of Russian nationalism is worth revisiting. In this deeply detailed history, Plokhy (Director, Ukrainian Research Institute, Harvard Univ.; The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine, 2015, etc.) recognizes 15th-century ruler Ivan III as the self-declared scion to “all Rus” lands, retaken after challenging the Mongol khans. Ivan also made the first connection as heir to Byzantium by marrying the niece of the last Byzantine emperor. Ivan declared his sovereignty over the lands of Mongol Rus, which included not only Moscow, but extended to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. As the Orthodox Church consolidated its holdings, Ukraine and Belarus were incorporated into the Commonwealth, instigating the terminology “Great” and “Little” Rus, while “ ‘White Rus’ (Belarus) was added to the tsar’s title in 1655.” These reflected the political upheavals in the region and gave the Muscovy elite the first sense of themselves as a true nation. Peter the Great’s victory at Poltava in 1709, as well as subsequent victories, helped him to control “the national discourse, with its emphasis on the fatherland, the nation, and the common good.” Indeed, in 1721, he received the appellations “All-Russian Emperor” and “Father of the Fatherland.” Plokhy pursues the flimsy cohesion of this “tripartite nation” over the subsequent centuries, as Ukraine’s sense of selfhood and distinct language emerged primarily in the mid-19th century, challenging the official Russian version of nation and state. During the Revolution of 1917, Vladimir Lenin, unlike Stalin, rejected the “great-power chauvinism” of a Russian Federation of states. Lenin was in favor of allowing Ukraine to branch off as a distinct entity, while Stalin’s subsequent “indigenization policy” was soon reversed as it collided with political repression.
A dense history that may lose readers not versed in Russian history, but for students and scholars, Plokhy continues to show that he is the master of this terrain.Pub Date: Oct. 10, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-465-09849-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2017
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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