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Jonathan Miles (2)

Autor de Wreck of the Medusa

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5 Obras 368 Miembros 7 Reseñas

Sobre El Autor

Cultural historian Jonathan Miles has a personal engagement with St. Petersburg and its people that dates back to the Soviet era. Graduating magna cum laude from University College, London, he received his doctorate from Jesus College, Oxford. He is the author of Wreck of the Medusa and The Nine mostrar más Lives of Otto Katz. Visit him at jonathanmiles.net. mostrar menos
Créditos de la imagen: Amazon

Obras de Jonathan Miles

Etiquetado

Conocimiento común

Género
male

Miembros

Reseñas

really liked it-just wish more was known found it somewhat difficult to keep track of the different castaways
 
Denunciada
cspiwak | 5 reseñas más. | Mar 6, 2024 |
Although born a Baby Boomer, I was raised by parents for whom WWII was the defining event in their lives. Every year on December 7, my mother sent me off to school with the admonishment to remember that it was Pearl Harbor Day. My family watched every movie ever made about the war and all of the television series set during the war.

The Cold War with its accompanying Duck and Cover Drills defined my life. Signs in public buildings directing visitors to fallout shelters were ubiquitous. NATO stood guard in Europe. A war was being fought in Viet Nam to prevent the spread of Communism in Asia. I read long and deeply trying to understand the how and why of the Communist threat that hung like a malevolent cloud over my life.

When I picked up this book, my first thought was "Otto who?" I thought that I knew just about everything about the political threats of the first half of the Twentieth Century. The reason I had never heard of Otto Katz is that he was so successful as a spy, few people ever knew his real name. Born in 1895 to a wealthy Czech family, he was a lazy playboy and a "useless" soldier during WWI. After the war, he drifted to Berlin joining the art scene and becoming a true believer in Socialism.

It was his wealthy background and artistic contacts that made him such a successful spy and fundraiser for the Russians. He travelled the world using different names and passports making him difficult to track by Western intelligence agencies. He spent time in Spain during the Spanish Civil War, in Hollywood amongst German expatriates such as Marlene Dietrich and the director Fritz Lang, and in Mexico City where Germans who had fled Hitler’s Germany had settled.

In the end, it was his cosmopolitanism that did him in. In Stalin’s paranoid mind, anyone who had spent significant amounts of time outside of the Eastern Bloc was suspected of having been turned by Western intelligence agencies. The fact that Katz was a Jew sealed his fate. He was tried and executed in 1952.

Author Jonathan Miles does a good job of tracing Katz’s complex life. The book is rich in detail about Katz’s life up to the beginning of WWII. After that point, the narrative becomes less detailed and more hurried as if Miles is impatient to get to the end of his story. Katz’s trial, execution and rehabilitation a decade later are given short shrift. I wish that Miles had taken more time and given more weight to the last decade of Katz’s life. It was an important period not just in his life, but also in world history. WWII shaped the political landscape of the second half of the Twentieth Century. Katz was an important participant and deserves a full treatment of his entire life, not just part of his life.
… (más)
 
Denunciada
OldRoses | Dec 31, 2010 |
This was not just one book. This is several books. Most of them are about post revolutionary France or a bio of an artist. The book about the wreck is only about the first five chapters.
 
Denunciada
Neilsantos | 5 reseñas más. | Oct 8, 2010 |
In The Wreck of the Medusa, Jonathan Miles deftly interweaves the story of the ill-fated shipwreck, its survivors, and the life of Theodore Gericault who rendered the famous painting of the ship's raft.

The story of the raft's unfortunate fate is the most sensational aspect of the shipwreck as it combines the injustice of the captain abandoning hundreds, mutiny, and cannibalism. But Miles resists the temptation to descend to lurid descriptions of the horrors. Nor does he shortchange the sufferings of those in lifeboats who had to trek through the unyielding desert. Instead Miles' descriptions are evocative with many sections drawn directly from first-person accounts.

The author lends depth to the reader's understanding of Gericault's painting by describing the painter's artistic development, the influence of his personal life, of survivor Alexandre Correard, and the implications of Gericault's political leanings - particularly concerning the abolition movement.

While certainly engrossing, Miles' account of the shipwreck is a confusion of names. It was difficult at times to tell who was on what craft, who landed where, and in what circumstances. Given the importance the raft would later take, that section also seemed a bit brief. Furthermore, a few incidents were included that seemed to have little to do with the overall point of the work (the Fualdes incident). The placement of the plate of the famous painting renders it useless as the main focus of the canvas (and many of the details the author analyzes) are hidden in the fold of the pages. Luckily the painting is easily found online.

Aside from these few quibbles, Miles has written an informative and thorough book examining the causes and the influences (artistic and political) of the famous wreck of the Medusa. Well worth reading.
… (más)
2 vota
Denunciada
Caramellunacy | 5 reseñas más. | Apr 9, 2008 |

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Obras
5
Miembros
368
Popularidad
#65,433
Valoración
½ 3.6
Reseñas
7
ISBNs
64
Idiomas
4

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