Evan S. Connell (Washington, D.C.: Counterpoint, 2000) 462 pp., $28.00
The author of a best-selling history of Custer’s last stand (Son of Morning Star) and the highly acclaimed novels Mr. Bridge and Mrs. Bridge, Evan. S. Connell is known for his thoughtful, meticulously researched portraits of American life. Now he brings his talents to bear on more distant terrain: the medieval Crusades. Drawing on hundreds of primary sources, Connell has created a “lost chronicle,” written by the real-life 12th-century French nobleman Jean de Joinville. Tracing the 200 years of Crusader history, this saga brings to life some famous personalities (like Frederick Barbarossa) and historical events (like the capture of Jerusalem). The book is fast-paced, highly readable and historically accurate. Connell’s greatest accomplishment, though, is his systematic re-creation of the medieval voice—a kind of historical ventriloquism that makes the past palpable.
Eye of Horus
Carol Thurston (New York: William Morrow, 2000) 384 pp., $24.00
Why was the Lady Tashat, a young Egyptian noblewomen who lived in ancient Thebes about two thousand years ago, tortured to death and then embalmed with a man’s linen-wrapped skull wedged between her legs? For almost 20 years—ever since radiologists at the University Minnesota X-rayed Tashat’s mummy in 1983—Egyptologists have been confounded by this real-life mystery. Now, inspired by the radiologists’ work, author Carol Thurston has written her own highly fictionalized version of Tashat’s history. Her premise: What if the mutilated mummy were really the secret daughter of Egypt’s Queen Nefertiti? (In fact, Queen Nefertiti and her husband, the heretic pharaoh Akhenaten, lived at least three centuries earlier than the real Tashat, but Thurston doesn’t claim to be writing anything other than fiction.) Moving back and forth in time between the fourteenth century B.C. and the present, this historical thriller blends ancient political intrigue with the latest in high-tech forensic research. It also features some pretty steamy romance.
Tides of War
Steven Pressfield (New York: Doubleday, 2000) 416 pp., $24.95
Although he is seldom discussed in classrooms today, the Athenian general Alcibiades (451–404 B.C.) was once the most admired man in all of ancient Greece. A disciple of Socrates, the heir of Pericles and the most brilliant military mind of his generation, he strode like a colossus across the battlefields of the Peloponnesian Wars—fighting first for his home state of Athens and then, after being exiled by an ungrateful populace, for the Athenians’ dreaded enemy, Sparta. Alcibiades was never defeated in battle, but he was ultimately undone by his own ambition. The charismatic general’s life and influence are now explored in a new action-packed historical adventure by the popular novelist Steven Pressfield. As a work of literature, however, this book will not replace Mary Renault’s The Last of the Wine. Pressfield’s novel is marred by clunky dialogue, poorly integrated history and a cumbersome narrative structure. But the news is not all bad: The Tides of War shows a mastery of classical Athenian politics, and contains vivid descriptions of both battle scenes and plague-ridden Athens.
Deus Lo Volt
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