For scholars of ancient history.
An academic study centered on the events of 49 B.C.E., when Julius Caesar marched his army into Rome and destroyed the republic.
Fezzi (Roman History/Univ. of Padua) begins with more than most readers want to know about Roman governmental structure. Although a republic (a nation without a king), it barely qualified as a democracy. Every citizen could vote, but in its complex, corrupt electoral system, only the very wealthy could win high-level positions, which were unpaid. Being a victorious general has been a vote-getter throughout history, and Caesar took full advantage. By the first century B.C.E., murderous generals dominated the republic, which was on its last legs. Fezzi examines the period after 60 B.C.E., an era that featured three strong men: Caesar, then engaged in conquering Gaul; Pompey, an older general already famous for his victories; and the fabulously wealthy Crassus. They cooperated only as far as it served their interests. Fezzi’s favorite source, Cicero, was a senator and lawyer who sometimes opposed Caesar. As a lawyer, he often prosecuted or defended and then wrote about it. Trials in ancient Rome were often open-air spectacles where crowds occasionally rioted and killed participants. Aiming to leave no stone unturned, the author recounts so many of Cicero’s legal actions that readers may lose track and likely interest. Matters came to a head in 49 B.C.E., with Crassus dead and Pompey and the Senate scheming against Caesar, still occupied in Gaul. Ordered to return, he was obligated to come alone because no general could bring his army into Italy—at that time bounded on the north by the river Rubicon. Apparently fearing for his life, he brought his army, beginning a vicious civil war that ended with his victory and, a year later, assassination. General readers take note: This is a dense, bookish history; Tom Holland’s Rubicon delivers a far more lucid but still intelligent account of this period.
For scholars of ancient history.Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-24145-7
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Oct. 18, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2019
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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