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WARRIOR

THE LEGEND OF COLONEL RICHARD MEINERTZHAGEN

In this, the old Africa hand's final book, completed by his wife, Fiona, after his death in 1996, Capstick assembles an admiring and often circuitous biography from the diaries of a lethal and daring soldier of the late British Empire and hunter extraordinaire. As though dictated from an armchair during a long South African evening, Capstick's (The African Adventurers, 1992, etc.) account is anecdotal, repetitive, digression-laden, and composed of hugely elliptical sentences. His insight into his hero's psyche is superficial and often based on Capstick's own predilections. That said, Meinertzhagen's life makes for a ripping good yarn. A child of privilege, he enlisted in the army, landing in British East Africa in 1902 as a young officer in the King's African Rifles. He soon earned fame as a fearless lion hunter, a dedicated soldier who singlehandedly killed scores of restless natives—of the Kikuyu tribe, mainly—and for, of all things, his zeal for ornithology. By WW I, he was fighting in East Africa aginst the Germans and their native allies; as his reputation for ruthless effectiveness grew, so did his quarrels with the British command and his criticism of the Indian troops fighting for the English. His familiarity with the African bush led to a transfer to intelligence, and he served later as a spymaster for Allenby in Palestine. Meinertzhagen seems to have been the Kilroy of the first half of the century: He was present at the Treaty of Versailles; he met Hitler three times in his role as British agent, once carrying a loaded gun with him but failing, to his later regret, to use it; and he tirelessly, in the face of British anti-Semitism, promoted the Zionist cause. He survived shipwrecks, poisoned arrows, airplane crashes, and wild animal attacks, dying in 1967 at age 89. While maddeningly written, with many scattershot and unsupportable observations, not a few firmly in the politically incorrect camp, this is quite a story of one of the last great figures of the colonial age. (7 maps, 10 illustrations)

Pub Date: Feb. 16, 1998

ISBN: 0-312-18271-6

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1997

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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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