Tag: History

I haven’t read a history book in a while, and I am glad that I chose this one because it was interesting, informative, but most of all, it was horrid in the most heinous of ways.

The events of this novel started taking place a little over a hundred years ago. It feels like such a short period of time when you consider the existence of humans. I have a hard time imagining how at the time caucasian people treated native american indians as though they were barely human, as though the color of their skin meant they were not equals of white men. The native americans were pushed from their lands almost as soon as european immigrants started to colonize north america, they were still doing it up until around a hundred years ago. It was because of the greed of white men, the forcing of native americans off of their ancestral land that was the starting point of this great tragedy that was referred to as the Reign of Terror. 

When the Osage tribe was told that they had to leave their land and move to a dry, rocky, seemingly useless pittance given to them by the United States government, they did so. Being a people of the land they knew how to survive anywhere. But the government didn’t realize that the land they gifted to the Osage people was rich in oil. Soon after the discovery of the oil, white men started to flock to that very land and drill into it, trying to get every drop of that black gold. Because the land was owned by the Osage, they became some of the wealthiest people in the country. As you can imagine, prejudiced white men didn’t like that there were native american indians becoming more wealthy than they were, more wealthy than they could even imagine. Thus began a huge scandal of false marriages, poisonings, murders, and other cruelties that I can’t believe were possible. 

This story was absolutely wild. I can’t believe that the officers of the law were able to finally untangle the web that was the plot to rob the Osage tribe of all their wealth, essentially  actively sending all these people into poverty as they made themselves wealthy beyond imagination. Now that I know the real story, I am eager to see how the movie portrays these events. I imagine there will be that Hollywood flair added, but I am mostly keen to see if the writers and directors were able to portray just what a gruesome moment in history this was, something that should not have happened and should never happen again. I would like to offer the highest of praise to the author of this book for taking the time to go through thousands of pages of documents that were at least a century old, and piecing together everything the way he did to make it such an informative and enlightening read.

I bought this book a few weeks ago. Coincidentally, while going through the pictures on my phone I saw that I had taken a photo of it many months ago with the intention to buy it at some point because it looked interesting. I guess I decided on purchasing it on this most recent trip because somewhere in the back of my mind I remembered that I was intrigued a long time ago. 

History books can be a little boring for me at times, especially if they are written in a manner that reminds me of high school textbooks. I was never fond of history in school, which is the opposite of how I feel about reading the subject now. I love European history, being that it is laughable when you read about all the terribly planned arranged marriages between men and women who do not suit each other, scandalous when you consider the sheer number of unions made between first cousins, and occasionally between uncles and their nieces, and despicable regarding the things that monarchs and persons in other positions of power would do when they held a grudge. It’s dramatic, and I love it. This book detailed the entire history of the Habsburg family, from the very first of them to come into power to the end of the dynasty in the early 1900s. My favorite chapter, or one of the ones I enjoyed the most, was chapter seventeen which detailed some of Maria Theresa’s rule as empress. Overall, the book is incredibly informative going into who ruled, the accumulation and loss of territory over the centuries, and the politics, art, science, religion, and other important particulars of the times. I also found an amazing woman online who does a series of five videos on the history of the Holy Roman Empire, if you would rather watch a video over reading a book. I will put a link to the first video in her series at the bottom of the post. Her channel name is History Tea Time with Lindsay Holiday and she has a ton of videos. She has a really clear, pleasant voice, and this series has great visualizations with maps, territory lines, portraits, and depictions of art.

There is one detail that made me really enamored of this book. It may seem like a silly little thing but it was a big deal for me. A lot of history books will include a section of pictures, which are usually located somewhere in the middle of the text. A lot of those pictures are placed right in the middle of a chapter, which I have always found annoying as it interrupts the reading. They also are usually placed mid-sentence, which means you either have to go back and restart the sentence after you look at all the pictures or you have to find the end of the pictures and finish reading the sentence before viewing. I very much appreciated that the pictures in this book were placed right at the end of a chapter.

I absolutely loved this book! I have not read a historical account this amazing ever. This almost seven hundred page novel chronicles the entire history of Scotland, from its very beginnings up until the late nineties. It took me forever to read, being almost seven hundred pages, and the text inside being relatively small, but I found myself constantly ready to pick it up and read as much as I could in the time I had set aside for reading. There was not a single moment in which I said to myself, I need to put this down for a while and read something else, because the writing was just so engaging. Shortly after I began reading I knew I needed to find out more about this author and see what other books he had written, because I knew if he had penned other novels about the history of other countries that I would want to read those as well.

Magnus Magnusson, incredible name by the way, was born in Iceland, but made his way over to Edinburgh with his family as a child. Although he is no longer with us, he left behind an incredible collection of novels, including additional works about Scotland, books about Iceland, and books about Vikings. I cannot tell you how excited I am at the prospect of buying all of his works. Even after reading about the entire history of Scotland in this novel, I am hungry to learn more, not just from Mr Magnusson, but from anyone, anywhere. I left so many notes behind in this book, marking pieces of information that intrigued me and subjects that I wanted to learn more about in the future. I have been spoiled here however, as I don’t know if I will ever find another author who writes in such a way that makes history so interesting and enjoyable. I highly encourage anyone to read this book.