During this time of bloated biographies, here is a refreshingly brief portrait of one of the most important figures of 19th-century European economic and modern Jewish history: Meyer Amschel Rothschild (17441812). Elon, the veteran Israeli journalist (Jerusalem: City of Mirrors, 1989; Herzl: A Biography, 1975; etc.) presents a man who spent almost his entire life in the crowded, sunless Judengasse, the ``Jew street,'' that comprised almost all of the Frankfurt ghetto. By skillfully cultivating the nobility and political elite of the surrounding state of Hesse, by demonstrating a single-minded devotion to business, innovative banking, and other mercantile practices, by embracing ``internationalization,'' sending two of his five sons to England and France (the others ultimately settled in Austria and Italy), and perhaps above all, by being fortunate enough to be active in a turbulent time (the Napoleonic wars) that opened up new possibilities, Rothschild gradually developed the powerhouse banking concern. During the decade from 1797 to 1807 alone, his assets quadrupled. However, the achievements of his five sons, led by Nathan in London, were even more impressive; their capital grew 40-fold between 1815 and 1828. By 1850, the ``House of Rothschild'' already had achieved mythical status for everyone from anti-Semitic political leaders to Jewish satirists. While periodically overwhelming the reader with technical details of high finance, Elon skillfully evokes the man (and his devoted, hyper- frugal wife, Guttle) and his expansive, if highly anti-Semitic, era. (In Frankfurt, Jews were not allowed out of the ghetto at night, and on Sundays they were not permitted to leave until church services ended; Christians addressed them with the same familiarity they used for servants.) While many books have dealt with the Rothschilds, Elon's focus on the family's founding patriarch yields a thoroughly researched, fascinating, and altogether exemplary biography. (illustrations, not seen)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-670-86857-4
Page Count: 201
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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