Impressive scholarship illuminates the Bronze Age.
Letters on clay offer a portal to a lost world.
In 1887, nearly 400 cuneiform tablets, dating from the 14th century B.C.E., were discovered at Amarna, in Egypt, a find that set dealers, scholars, and museum curators astir. As classicist Cline reveals in his lucid and authoritative investigation, the letters afford a rare look into the late Bronze Age and testify to the interconnectedness of the eastern Mediterranean. Besides detailing the content of the tablets, Cline applies social network analysis to draw surprising patterns of connections and relationships among the 246 people named in the letters. Nearly 50 tablets contain letters among the region’s great kings concerning diplomatic negotiations, demands, royal marriages, and other alliances. Sending a daughter to marry the reigning Egyptian pharaoh created bonds between families that likely led to agreements of mutual defense. These liaisons also involved the exchange of precious gifts, such as chariots, horses, lapis lazuli—and much gold. In contrast to royal letters, the large number of exchanges among local rulers portrays an unstable world of petty rivalries, “alliances made and broken, caravans robbed, and even assassinations and rulers sent into exile.” Accessing the letters’ contents depended on translations: immediately after their discovery, British and German scholars raced to be first. All faced daunting challenges: neither the Egyptians nor the Canaanite petty kingdoms spoke the same language as standard Assyro-Babylonian, and not every tablet was written in the same language, leading translators to make egregious errors. Some, for example, found biblical references when in fact there were none. Now scattered among 14 museums in eight countries, the tablets portray a historical past that, Cline asserts, has parallels to the complexities of the region in our own time. Illustrations include photographs of the tablets and drawings by Glynnis Fawkes.
Impressive scholarship illuminates the Bronze Age.Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2025
ISBN: 9780691274089
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Princeton Univ.
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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 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
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
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