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I'M NOT DONE YET!

KEEPING AT IT, REMAINING RELEVANT, AND HAVING THE TIME OF MY LIFE

Former New York City mayor—columnist—mystery novelist—radio pundit Koch reflects on life at 75, in a book whose meandering nature provides an apt chassis for Koch’s vigorous social views and uniquely optimistic/hectoring outlook. With good humor and mock shock at his longevity and continued public presence, Koch begins by enumerating the many employment venues he’s sampled in his determination to stay productive and relevant: movie critic, SlimFast spokesman, People’s Court judge. Although he’s disingenuous about being called the quintessential New Yorker, Koch embodies his city’s signal qualities, both good (his calls for racial and economic justice) and bad (his unapologetic self-importance). And while Koch’s opinions are usually strident, they are often compelling, as in his scorching attack on the widely accepted business practice of —downsizing— older workers, left to fend for themselves after decades of service. Such diatribes support Koch’s central point: the need to approach human aging shrewdly, in practical terms (money management, retirement savings, health insurance) as well as on the more essential spiritual level of keeping active and engaged with the world. His tone remains tart, but his topics are surprisingly varied: All manner of anecdotes, including graphic notes on his personal health, are followed by keen musings on subjects ranging from the racial disparities of American justice to the problematic state of live theater. And just when you think his opinions on public figures are predictably blunt (as when he savages Rudy Giuliani on civil-liberties grounds), he—ll surprise you with his humanistic consideration of a figure like Al Sharpton. If His Honor seems at times a brash (and now wizened) cartoon character who never spotted a fight or a digression he didn—t like, his latest missive should delight both senior readers, for whom Koch’s admittedly fortunate circumstances may still be instructive, and students of his classic New York attitude. (Author tour)

Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2000

ISBN: 0-688-17075-7

Page Count: 224

Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1999

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NIGHT

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. 

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.

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

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

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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