![]() ![]() Mao Zedong, who killed as many, but not all of them on purpose, came up with the biggest engineering project in human history, the massive Three Gorges Dam, which made a million people homeless.īut it was Hitler who most understood the nexus between architecture and power. Stalin, who was probably the biggest murderer in human history, with 40 million corpses to his debit, named a whole city after himself. The great 20th-century dictators employed the same psychology. ![]() ![]() Now the megalomaniacal Saddam had declared himself to be the reincarnation of Nebuchadnezzar and would soon rule over the world's next great empire. Then, 1,500 years later, it held the throne of Nebuchadnezzar II, one of the most ruthless conquerors in history who built what was the most powerful nation in the world. Some 4,000 years earlier, the city had been the capital of Hammurabi, emperor of Babylonia, and the man responsible for the world's first legal code. ![]() I had gone there to see the work begun by Iraq's then leader, Saddam Hussein, who had conceived a grandiose plan to rebuild the ancient city of Babylon. "Where did you find that?" a diplomat at the British embassy in Baghdad, whose hobby was antiquities, asked me, adding: "It's Seleucid, about 150BC." I had picked it up several hours' drive to the south from a pile of debris pushed aside by a bulldozer. Somewhere in my cellar, in the collected treasures of my travels, is a shard of patterned clay pottery. ![]()
0 Comments
5/25/2023 0 Comments Kira buxton![]() ![]() sets out to save Big Jim and, perhaps, all of humanity. With the help of their lovable hound Dennis, S.T. S.T.'s worldview is colored by his owner, Big Jim, a Seattle resident with an affinity for cursing, Big Butts magazine, Tinder hookups, and - now that he's a zombie - standing in a room and scratching at the wall. Most notably by a foul-mouthed domesticated crow named Shit Turd. But the twist here is that the story of humanity's downfall is narrated by the animals left behind. ![]() ![]() And that's before the entire human race is turned into zombies.īuxton's novel is at its heart a standard apocalypse tale. Thusly named (by the actual fauna of the Earth) for the fact that they go around wrecking the environment like "milky-eyed machines intent on destruction, empty vessels that have lost their inner intelligence." A fair assessment, indeed. In Kira Jane Buxton’s Hollow Kingdom, the Hollows are the humans. ![]() ![]() ![]() All I knew was that Counted With the Stars, her debut novel, had something to do with it, and I determined to find and read it when I could. I knew there was more-a part of the story I’d missed-but what that “more” was was a mystery to me. Since then, I’ve read quite a few of her books and loved each one, but I always wondered what came before that first one. The first book I read by Connilyn Cossette was A Light on the Hill, and even though I struggled with a few scenes in that book, I was impressed by her writing style and the way she brought history to life. Synopsis: Sold as a slave by her father, Kiya must find a way to survive as Egypt is hit by plagues and her mistress grows angrier with her every day. Major Themes: Ancient Israel, Ancient Egypt, Biblical Fiction, Romance ![]() ![]() ![]() He doesn’t like to brag about all the awards he’s won, such as the Irish Book of the Decade, or the Red House in the UK, or all the other awards that he humbly displays on his mantelpiece. ![]() Landy himself was nominated for an IFTA for Best Script. In addition to the bestselling children's/YA series of Skulduggery Pleasant books, a supernatural mystery series starring Skulduggery Pleasant, a skeleton detective, and Valkyrie Cain, a young female magician, he has written two screenplays that have been made into films: the IFTA award winning "Dead Bodies" and the IFTA nominated "Boy Eats Girl". Derek Landy is an Irish writer and screenwriter. ![]() |