An eminent classical historian (Founders of the Western World, 1991, etc.) skillfully records the turbulent life of the first Christian Roman emperor and founder of Constantinople, Constantine the Great (c. 272337). Constantine grew up during the Tetrarchy, a system in which the Roman Empire was divided into western and eastern halves, each headed by an emperor (``Augustus'') and a deputy (``Caesar''). Constantine was the son of Constantius I Chlorus, a rough soldier of humble origin who rose to become the Caesar to Diocletian's co- emperor Maximian in 286. When Constantius was made Caesar of the western half, Constantine was left at the court of Diocletian until the resignation of Diocletian and Maximian in 305, leaving Constantius and Galerius as emperors. When Constantius died at York in 306, his troops hailed Constantine as the new emperor. Although Constantine showed genius as a general, Grant points out that he achieved his greatest victories in battles against fellow Romans: The author narrates Constantine's triumphs in the protracted civil wars with rivals Maximian and his son Maxentius in 310 and 312 and his giant victory over co-emperor Licinius at Hadrianopolis in 334, in which Constantine consolidated his control over the entire empire. Constantine dealt pitilessly with any challenge: Among his many victims, he had his eldest son Crispus murdered (326) based on charges from his (Constantine's) wife Fausta that Crispus was plotting to usurp the throne, and then had Fausta murdered on charges of adultery. Although the founding of Constantinople (330) and the establishment of state Christianity (312) were great achievements, Grant concludes that Constantine ``had a lot to answer for.'' Finally, despite the precedent of the Tetrarchy, he divided the empire among his sons at his death, thus ensuring another round of debilitating civil wars. A highly readable and superbly researched biography of a man whose achievements transformed the decaying Roman Empire and had a lasting impact on Europe. (History Book Club main selection)
Pub Date: July 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-684-19520-8
Page Count: 267
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1994
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
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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