by John D. Williams, Jr. ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 22, 2015
An average game with no triple word scores.
The co-author of the bestselling Everything SCRABBLE© returns with a motley collection of anecdotes, advice, and autobiography—all relating, more or less, to the game he loves.
Williams’ text follows his decades of experience as executive director of the National SCRABBLE Association, a tenure that ended recently due, in part, to the profound changes in the landscape of the gaming world. There is a little bit of everything here, including an appendix of proscribed game words (the naughty, the insulting), a mildly ranting chapter about grammar and usage, and a chapter that includes advice on how to tell someone that he or she has committed a solecism. Williams tells us a bit about his own playing career—he had early success, then quit studying so much and fell from grace—and about his joining the SCRABBLE team with owner Hasbro Inc. He relates stories about the spread of the competitive game, even into schools. Middle school, he and his team discover, is the best level. (A high school kid once called him a dork.) There is a dull chapter about adult championships, and there are some near-fawning chapters about the author’s experiences with TV and movie celebrities. (Actor Jack Black is a devoted player; on his show, Jimmy Kimmel played against scholastic champions; the producers of the 2001 film The Wedding Planner ignored his counsel.) Williams also tells about declining an appearance on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart because he feared an ambush, and he includes an awkward section about why men/boys seem to win all the championships. The author chronicles his interviews with some top women players, who, unfortunately, don’t shed much light on this issue. Williams takes a few pokes at some of the Hasbro executives he worked for (he also praises many others) and seems quite happy that his appearance on an episode of Martha Stewart’s show is still on YouTube.
An average game with no triple word scores.Pub Date: June 22, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-87140-773-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Liveright/Norton
Review Posted Online: March 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2015
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by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
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
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by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 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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