An elucidating portrayal of a noted figure in European history.
In this installment of a series celebrating the lives of renowned Italians and Italian-Americans, the author draws on imagination and research to fill in the many gaps in the historical record of Italian merchant and explorer Giovanni Caboto, better known as John Cabot.
The book follows Giovanni from childhood in Genoa until his family relocates to Venice and Giovanni nudges his way into the fringes of the city’s elite and begins to travel for the family trading business. Financial ruin drives them out of the city, and Giovanni makes a living designing public works in Spain, hoping to get royal authorization to seek out routes to Asia, just like his rival Cristoforo Colombo. When the Spanish monarchs refuse him, he relocates to England, where he is able to convince Henry VII to approve his voyages, ultimately making two trips to North America and claiming land for England. Working from a scanty historical record (historians are not even sure whether Caboto survived his second voyage), Selbo (Piazza Carousel, 2017, etc.) animates the era with strong pacing and well-developed characters, including Giovanni’s brother, Piero, his most committed supporter, and his wife, Mattea, an independent-minded daughter of Venetian nobility. Some of the imagined scenes may be a bit heavy on coincidence (Giovanni and Cristoforo first meet as teenagers in a Genoa map shop, and the adult Giovanni’s first voyage to the New World is on one of Cristoforo’s ships), but the plot is so emotionally and historically satisfying that the reader is likely to forgive this. The writing is skilled, though characters are at times overly aware of their place in history (“These are instruments necessary for what I would like to call the European Age of Discovery,” Giovanni’s teacher declares). On the whole, however, the book is both an enjoyable read and a well-informed exercise in historical speculation.
An elucidating portrayal of a noted figure in European history.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-947431-16-4
Page Count: 312
Publisher: Barbera Foundation
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
Genetically engineered dinosaurs run amok in Crichton's new, vastly entertaining science thriller. From the introduction alone—a classically Crichton-clear discussion of the implications of biotechnological research—it's evident that the Harvard M.D. has bounced back from the science-fantasy silliness of Sphere (1987) for another taut reworking of the Frankenstein theme, as in The Andromeda Strain and The Terminal Man. Here, Dr. Frankenstein is aging billionaire John Hammond, whose monster is a manmade ecosystem based on a Costa Rican island. Designed as the world's ultimate theme park, the ecosystem boasts climate and flora of the Jurassic Age and—most spectacularly—15 varieties of dinosaurs, created by elaborate genetic engineering that Crichton explains in fascinating detail, rich with dino-lore and complete with graphics. Into the park, for a safety check before its opening, comes the novel's band of characters—who, though well drawn, double as symbolic types in this unsubtle morality play. Among them are hero Alan Grant, noble paleontologist; Hammond, venal and obsessed; amoral dino-designer Henry Wu; Hammond's two innocent grandchildren; and mathematician Ian Malcolm, who in long diatribes serves as Crichton's mouthpiece to lament the folly of science. Upon arrival, the visitors tour the park; meanwhile, an industrial spy steals some dino embryos by shutting down the island's power—and its security grid, allowing the beasts to run loose. The bulk of the remaining narrative consists of dinos—ferocious T. Rex's, voracious velociraptors, venom-spitting dilophosaurs—stalking, ripping, and eating the cast in fast, furious, and suspenseful set-pieces as the ecosystem spins apart. And can Grant prevent the dinos from escaping to the mainland to create unchecked havoc? Though intrusive, the moralizing rarely slows this tornado-paced tale, a slick package of info-thrills that's Crichton's most clever since Congo (1980)—and easily the most exciting dinosaur novel ever written. A sure-fire best-seller.
Pub Date: Nov. 7, 1990
ISBN: 0394588169
Page Count: 424
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1990
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
