A well-researched, absorbing, and open-minded case for biblical historicity.
Crane addresses questions of the biblical historicity in this nonfiction exploration of the Pentateuch.
“There is no one right way to approach the Bible,” the author reminds readers in the book’s introduction. Despite being the world’s bestselling book, most readers do not understand the historical context in which the Bible was produced or its connection to the broader picture of world history. Born out of Crane’s belief that background knowledge of the Bible’s first five books (or Pentateuch) “can support and enhance religious or secular understanding of this great work,” the book is driven by a central question: Is history compatible with biblical accounts? Reveling in nuance and displaying a firm grasp of contemporary historiography, the author notes that archaeologists and historians have yet to form a singular consensus on ancient history. Adding to the complexity of studying Biblical history, per Crane, is the fact that the Bible is a genre-defying work that blends nonfictional accounts with theology, poetry, parody, metaphor, and hyperbole. While deliberately obfuscating his own theological beliefs, the author ultimately sides with those who believe that the events described in the Torah actually took place (though he tempers this sentiment with an acknowledgement that the Pentateuch does not share modern preoccupations with chronological and geographic accuracy or other concerns of contemporary historians). Additionally, the book makes a compelling, if not particularly novel, case that the Bible’s first five books directly shaped subsequent world history. (“Our modern civil society,” Crane writes, “is a direct descendent of ancient Hebrew holy innovations.”) The book’s erudite yet accessible text is broken into concise chapters that are often only a few pages in length and include a wealth of color-coded charts and high-resolution maps, photographs, paintings, and other images. The author of multiple books on Jewish history, Crane confidently guides readers through the labyrinth of ancient history with an engaging writing style. The text is supplemented by a 25-page bibliography of scholarly research.
A well-researched, absorbing, and open-minded case for biblical historicity.Pub Date: June 20, 2024
ISBN: 9781414504889
Page Count: 284
Publisher: Pavilion Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 23, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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