A robust collection that sheds light on multiple aspects of Jewish history.
This fifth book in a series about Jewish history and culture, edited by Kaplan, covers the years 1500 to 1750.
The “early modern period” discussed here was a time of many upheavals in Jewish history. Expulsions from various European locales (Vienna in 1670, for example) and communities in the New World and outbreaks of the plague are just a few of the occurrences that shaped Jewish life. This was a time of great thinkers, like Baruch Spinoza, and men who claimed to be the messiah, like the Portuguese-born Solomon Molkho (while the former was exiled for his controversial views, the latter was executed in 1532). Such is the wealth of information the reader encounters in the writings, visual arts, and miscellanea referenced here. The Chantilly Haggadah, from an unknown artist in the 1500s, includes the rules for a Passover seder as practiced by “Greek-speaking Jewish communities of the eastern Mediterranean.” Yom Tov Lipmann Heller, a rabbi born in 1578, writes of his experience being arrested for blasphemy against Christianity. Visual material includes images of a Torah ark from a synagogue in Urbino, Italy, and of ceremonies such as a wedding at a synagogue in Germany in 1705. With over 1,000 pages of content, even a cursory glance requires commitment, which pays off in unexpected ways. The reader may be surprised at just how contemporary many of these early modern period writers may seem. A brief guide written in Yiddish for traveling to Jerusalem includes the practical advice to “buy Turkish-style travel garments” during the journey. Other entries surprise in different ways: Excerpts from confessions from the Spanish Inquisition include statements from some who were enticed into “serving the Law of Moses” at the behest of a girl who was eventually burned at the stake. Though the length of the book may be daunting, it is filled with enticing subject matter.
A robust collection that sheds light on multiple aspects of Jewish history.Pub Date: March 21, 2023
ISBN: 978-0300135510
Page Count: 1392
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 25, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
HISTORY | MODERN | JEWISH | GENERAL HISTORY
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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