by Gary U.S. Bonds Stephen Cooper ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2013
A worthwhile rock ’n’ roll memoir, and an inspiring story about following one’s bliss.
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Rock ’n’ roll pioneer Bonds details his remarkable half-century career in popular music.
Gary U.S. Bonds—born Gary L. Anderson—was barely in his 20s when his performances of rollicking tunes like “New Orleans” (1960) and “Quarter to Three” (1961) allowed him to break into the upper echelons of rock ’n’ roll music. Just five years later, however, Bonds’ shooting star already began to fade. Despite widespread critical acclaim, the Norfolk, Va., resident would spend the next four decades trying to scrape by on the golden-oldies circuit, playing in hotel lounges and even shopping malls. But as this briskly-paced career retrospective demonstrates, he rarely dwelled on the negative, even when performing to largely empty ballrooms and reading starkly worded foreclosure notices. Bonds’ persistence and belief in his own talents paid off in the early 1980s when he defied industry expectations and reignited his career after meeting Bruce Springsteen. Together with the Boss’ E Street Band alums, Bonds appeared in front of sold-out crowds and started recording such hits as “This Little Girl” (1981). Sadly, this rejuvenation was short-lived, and Bonds was soon back to struggling to make ends meet. Undaunted, the distinctive singer picked up and continued on as before, buoyed by what had sustained him throughout his turbulent career—loyal friends and a loving family. Bonds wastes little energy sniping at Frank Guida, the late Legrand Records producer who helped give him his start in music and, according to the author, deprived him of many hard-earned dollars—an all-too-familiar story. However, this decades-spanning professional memoir contains strikingly little bitterness; instead, Bonds’ incredible devotion to music shines through. It took Bonds, now in his seventh decade, this long to write his story, but it just might signal another professional rebirth. He’s done it before.
A worthwhile rock ’n’ roll memoir, and an inspiring story about following one’s bliss.Pub Date: June 1, 2013
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 230
Publisher: Wheatley Press, LLC
Review Posted Online: March 6, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by David Grann ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 18, 2017
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
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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 Yorker staff 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
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by Ta-Nehisi Coates ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 8, 2015
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
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The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
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