A treasure trove of information for readers seduced by the drowned land.
Since the fourth century B.C.E., the fabulous island of Atlantis has invited avid curiosity and speculation.
Kershaw (Classics/Oxford Univ.; A Brief History of the Roman Empire, 2013, etc.) ranges widely and deeply to create a comprehensive overview of the origins, meaning, and legacy of Atlantis, described by Plato in two dialogues. Besides translating and analyzing Plato’s texts, Kershaw draws on geophysical, archaeological, and historical sources to investigate the tale and respond to still-unresolved questions: Was Atlantis a real place? What did Plato mean to convey by his story of the rich and powerful island that disappeared into the Atlantic Ocean? Those questions have spawned responses from historians and archaeologists as well as from many who “have taken the discussion, quite literally, to another world.” Theosophy founder Madame Helena Blavatsky, for example, claimed that Atlantis arose about 850,000 years ago and was the home of the “Fourth Root Race,” one of seven human Root Races corresponding to seven eras in world history. According to Blavatsky and other occultists, Atlantis “had the type of extraordinarily advanced scientific knowledge that has become a standard feature of Atlantological books.” Mystic Edgar Cayce, who said that he connected with spirits of individuals who had once lived on Atlantis, similarly claimed that the island “had some astonishingly advanced technology, much of it driven by energy derived from the power of crystals.” A 17th-century Swedish scholar argued that Atlantis—located in Sweden—was peopled by the descendants of one of Noah’s sons. In addition to presenting assorted bizarre theories, Kershaw explores Greek and Egyptian mythology, Homeric works, and mid-fifth-century Athenian culture to conclude that Atlantis was “an amalgamation of a variety of places and events that Plato would have been aware of from his own upbringing, reading and life experiences.” He believes Plato’s message is “a timeless one about the pernicious effects of wealth on the ruling class,” with lasting appeal because of the “brilliance of Plato’s story-telling.”
A treasure trove of information for readers seduced by the drowned land.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-68177-859-4
Page Count: 428
Publisher: Pegasus
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2018
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 Yorkerstaff 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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