A classically riveting crime tale, all the more fascinating for being true.
This historical crime debut details the life of a white-collar criminal who fled the United States for Venezuela in the early 20th century.
Civic leader and family man Henry Sanger Snow, from the Brooklyn Heights neighborhood of New York, was 51 years old in 1908, the year he lost his job as treasurer of the New York and New Jersey Telephone Company. Newspapers quickly began reporting that his wife and children were now financially compromised, primarily because police learned that Snow had been embezzling thousands of dollars from his company for years. Snow instructed his family and friends to convince investigators he’d soon surrender; he fled the country instead. He arrived in Venezuela, where he used the name Cyrus N. Clark to establish himself. An energetic liar and manipulator, he eventually procured for himself the position of vice consul and deputy consul in Caracas. Throughout World War I, he used the post to cause mayhem for his superiors, Thomas Voetter and Preston McGoodwin, all while ingratiating himself to the nation’s cruel dictator, Gen. Juan Vicente Gómez. In 1918, Clark became the sales manager for the Caribbean Petroleum Co. He spent the postwar years comfortably, even starting a new family while his American loved ones fell from their once-lofty place in society, missing both financial and emotional security. Veteran journalist Brandt follows Snow/Clark’s tracks in great depth through most of the 37 years he avoided justice. This window onto the early 20th century is wonderfully clear, bolstered by exuberant research. With minimal editorializing, Brandt offers the portrait of a narcissist who “spent his life charming people, winning them over, and making them accept whatever he said.” Brandt quotes from four diaries Snow left to his children, as well as government documents; with tremendous gall, Snow upbraided Voetter for firing him by saying “double-dealing, insincerity...and injustice will surely recoil upon the man who adopts them!” Also included are black-and-white photos. Tellingly, one with Snow and his children has been ripped in half.
A classically riveting crime tale, all the more fascinating for being true.Pub Date: April 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4935-0947-8
Page Count: 298
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: July 23, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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