Rebellious decades come to life vividly in a taut, spirited history.
A dramatic portrait of 15th-century England, which was besieged by political upheaval, betrayals, and ruthless violence.
Penn, publishing director of Penguin Books UK and biographer of Henry VII, the first Tudor king, brings keen understanding and a sharp eye for detail to his prodigiously researched, engrossing history of the decadeslong conflict between the houses of Lancaster and York that ended, in 1485, with the advent of Henry VII. The brothers York were Edward, who reigned as Edward IV; George, duke of Clarence; and Richard, whose stealthy machinations gained him the crown after Edward died and his sons—Edward’s heirs—mysteriously disappeared under Richard’s watch. When Edward ascended to the throne in 1471, after the murder of the Lancastrian Henry VI, the brothers were heralded as representing a “new Yorkist unity” whose “fraternal love” was evidence “that the rightful order of things had been restored.” That bond, though, proved fragile, as the lust for land, wealth, and power came to shape the brothers’ relationships with one another, their political alliances, and their marriages. Knowing that family ties did not ensure loyalty, Edward heaped land grants and sumptuous goods on George to buy his faithfulness. As Penn writes, he “would be enveloped in Edward’s smothering love; in return he would give the king his unconditional obedience.” But when Clarence married an heiress, his need for his brother’s largesse diminished, and he became susceptible to treasonous plots. After a decade of Clarence’s defiance, Edward finally had enough; being the king’s brother could not save him from an ignominious fate. As for Richard, the young man praised for his “reckless bravery” grew into a violent, arrogant, and devious politician with his eye on nothing less than the throne. Besides chronicling intrigues, conspiracies, and shifting alliances among a large cast of characters, Penn details the “messy reality of life” among the nobles and their subjects: births and deaths, festivals and weddings, feasts and tournaments, famines and illness, and, not least, the unstoppable gossip that circulated constantly.
Rebellious decades come to life vividly in a taut, spirited history.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4516-9417-8
Page Count: 688
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
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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