A gripping, provocative, and deeply researched account of Plato’s failed experiment in enlightened autocracy.
There’s no talking sense into tyrants.
“Back from Syracuse?” quipped a colleague when Martin Heidegger resigned his rectorship at Freiburg in 1934. Plato’s legendary attempt to influence the political affairs of the most powerful state in the Hellenic world failed spectacularly and became shorthand for why a philosopher might attempt to shape a regime and how the regime shapes the philosopher. That Plato made three trips to Sicily to meet Syracusan tyrants was accepted fact in antiquity. Yet the best source for biographical detail is the Platonic letters whose authenticity is disputed. Romm, a professor of classics at Bard College, finds key letters authentic and deploys them to mark out a pathway into the Republic “by way of its political themes and its connections to Plato’s life.” On his first visit, Plato befriended Dion, brother-in-law of the tyrant Dionysius, in whom he saw philosophical potential. Yet he was disgusted by the sexual excess and daily gorging at the “Syracusan tables.” Back in Athens, having barely escaped with his freedom, Plato continued to develop his political philosophy when, 20 years later, the exiled Dion urged him to return to advise the young Dionysius II. Hoping to change the world, Plato twice more went to Syracuse to educate the tyrant in just rule. But the tyrant proved himself a poseur, and court intrigue again put Plato’s life in peril. Upon completing his education in the Form of the Good, the Republic’s philosopher-king reluctantly returned to the cave to engage in the affairs of men. Romm speculates that Plato’s impotence in the face of decades of political violence in Syracuse and the abject failure of Dion’s reign soured his views and led to increased political realism in his later works. Those who, like Platonist Harold Cherniss, believe “a work of art exists independently of its author” will be skeptical, but Romm delivers on his promise of “intriguing possibilities.”
A gripping, provocative, and deeply researched account of Plato’s failed experiment in enlightened autocracy.Pub Date: May 13, 2025
ISBN: 9781324093183
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
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
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.
A noted actor turns to verse: “Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.”
McConaughey, author of the gracefully written memoir Greenlights, has been writing poems since his teens, closing with one “written in an Australian bathtub” that reads just as a poem by an 18-year-old (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all-we-can-eat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental; only when he writes of life-changing events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job.
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781984862105
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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