A lively, well-researched history of lust for wealth and power.
The tale of a diamond that became a coveted prize during centuries of political turmoil.
The history of the Koh-i-Noor diamond is a narrative of greed, war, and barbaric cruelty. Dalrymple (Return of a King: The Battle for Afghanistan, 1839-42, 2013, etc.) and Anand (Sophia: Princess, Suffragette, Revolutionary, 2015) divide their chronology, with Dalrymple covering the gem’s history from its mysterious origins in antiquity, when it was apparently removed from the eye of an idol in southern India, through medieval times, devastating conflicts in the 17th and 18th centuries, and ending in 1839, when India’s ruler, and the gem’s owner, Ranjit Singh, died. Anand picks up the story with Britain’s increasing domination of India, the handing over of the diamond by Singh’s son to the East India Company, its perilous transit to Queen Victoria, and its fate up to the present. The diamond was large but not the largest in the coffers of Asian rulers: an inch and a half long, nearly an inch wide, and shaped like an egg. It became a symbol of power, worn on ceremonial occasions, strapped to the bicep of whoever possessed it; the gem was coveted despite its reputation of having “dark powers.” As Dalrymple writes, “few possessors of the Koh-i-Noor have led happy lives”—surely an understatement. “Its owners,” he acknowledges, “have variously been blinded, slow-poisoned, tortured to death, burned in oil, threatened with drowning, crowned with molten lead, assassinated by their own family and bodyguards, or have lost their kingdoms and died in penury.” The ship transporting the diamond to England was beset by cholera and a vicious storm. Although many who saw it described its amazing shine, viewers in England were disappointed when it was displayed at the Great Exhibition of 1851. Prince Albert contrived a new display case but eventually decided to have it cut. The result was a brilliant diamond half its original size. Currently, India, Pakistan, and the Taliban are zealously pressing for its return, which England staunchly refuses.
A lively, well-researched history of lust for wealth and power.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-63557-076-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: June 4, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2017
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
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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