An entirely rewarding history of a Europe-based struggle that “influenced the course of events across the globe.”
A doorstop history of the series of wars that represented “a contest of great powers on a truly global scale.”
Mikaberidze (European History/Louisiana State Univ., Shreveport; Burning of Moscow: Napoleon’s Trial by Fire 1812, 2014, etc.) stresses that although the Napoleonic Wars, which lasted from 1792 to 1815, were not the first truly worldwide conflicts, their scale “dwarfed” those that came before. Taken together, they became the “Great War” until a greater one broke out in 1914. “In his efforts to achieve French hegemony,” writes the author, “Napoleon indirectly became the architect of independent South America, reshaped the Middle East, strengthened British imperial ambitions, and contributed to the rise of American power.” Scholars have not ignored the war’s global reach, but Mikaberidze turns up plenty of obscure campaigns in a massive history that emphasizes politics over battlefield fireworks, and he delivers the information in lucid, opinionated prose that will keep the pages turning. The conflict began when France’s Legislative Assembly, “fired up by revolutionary enthusiasm” and convinced they faced an “immense foreign conspiracy,” declared war on Austria and Prussia. Although proclaiming that their armies were defending freedom and would be welcomed with open arms across Europe, French victories were so satisfying that they became an end in themselves, even before Napoleon arrived on the scene. Similarly, their opponents denounced the revolution but gave national interests—trade, territory, money—priority over ideology. The revolutionary-era national interests of Russia, Prussia, Austria, Britain, Spain, and America are no secret to educated readers, and many will have a passing acquaintance with the travails of Denmark, Sweden, Poland, and the Ottoman Empire. The painful experience (or even the existence) of Persia may come as a jolt, but it occupies its own fascinating chapter. Major campaigns involved several still-unconquered Indian principalities, the East Indies, the West Indies, and South Africa. Meanwhile, Spain’s South American colonies fended off multiple British invasions.
An entirely rewarding history of a Europe-based struggle that “influenced the course of events across the globe.”Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-19-995106-2
Page Count: 864
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: Oct. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2019
HISTORY | MODERN | MILITARY | 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 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
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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