Against the wishes of father, family and nation, 19-year-old Gilbert de Lafayette bought a ship, escaped France and became the youngest general in the Continental Army, a teenager leaving a young wife and a huge personal fortune to pursue military glory. Freedman knows how to distill a lively and focused story from a swamp of information on a much-studied subject, writing with an acute eye for fascinating detail and significant facts. The volume opens with a mysterious stranger, a fearsome beast, musketeers and a humiliating episode with Marie Antoinette, and later the spotlight remains expertly trained on Lafayette as he fights at the Battle of Brandywine Creek, winters at Valley Forge, meets with the Iroquois Confederacy and corners Cornwallis at Yorktown. Lafayette’s subsequent involvement in the French Revolution and his call for freeing American slaves demonstrate how he outgrew the “teenager in pursuit of military glory” to become a passionate spokesman for human rights. An interesting and useful commentary on selected sources rounds out another superb volume by a master of his craft. (Biography. 10 & up)
Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-8234-2182-4
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: July 15, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2010
Though not the most balanced, an enlightening look back for the queer future.
An adaptation for teens of the adult title A Queer History of the United States (2011).
Divided into thematic sections, the text filters LGBTQIA+ history through key figures in each era from the 1500s to the present. Alongside watershed moments like the 1969 Stonewall uprising and the HIV/AIDS crisis of the 1980s and 1990s, the text brings to light less well-known people, places, and events: the 1625 free love colony of Merrymount, transgender Civil War hero Albert D.J. Cashier, and the 1951 founding of the Mattachine Society, to name a few. Throughout, the author and adapter take care to use accurate pronouns and avoid imposing contemporary terminology onto historical figures. In some cases, they quote primary sources to speculate about same-sex relationships while also reminding readers of past cultural differences in expressing strong affection between friends. Black-and-white illustrations or photos augment each chapter. Though it lacks the teen appeal and personable, conversational style of Sarah Prager’s Queer, There, and Everywhere (2017), this textbook-level survey contains a surprising amount of depth. However, the mention of transgender movements and activism—in particular, contemporary issues—runs on the slim side. Whereas chapters are devoted to over 30 ethnically diverse gay, lesbian, bisexual, or queer figures, some trans pioneers such as Christine Jorgensen and Holly Woodlawn are reduced to short sidebars.
Though not the most balanced, an enlightening look back for the queer future. (glossary, photo credits, bibliography, index) (Nonfiction. 14-18)Pub Date: June 11, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-8070-5612-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Beacon Press
Review Posted Online: March 12, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
Conversational, sometimes playful—not the sort of book that would survive vetting by school-system censors these days, but a...
A lovely, lively historical survey that takes in Neanderthals, Hohenzollerns and just about everything in between.
In 1935, Viennese publisher Walter Neurath approached Gombrich, who would go on to write the canonical, bestselling Story of Art, to translate a history textbook for young readers. Gombrich volunteered that he could do better than the authors, and Neurath accepted the challenge, provided that a completed manuscript was on his desk in six weeks. This book, available in English for the first time, is the happy result. Gombrich is an engaging narrator whose explanations are charming if sometimes vague. (Take the kid-friendly definition of truffles: “Truffles,” he says, “are a very rare and special sort of mushroom.” End of lesson.) Among the subjects covered are Julius Caesar (who, Gombrich exults, was able to dictate two letters simultaneously without getting confused), Charlemagne, the American Civil War, Karl Marx, the Paris Commune and Kaiser Wilhelm. As he does, he offers mostly gentle but pointed moralizing about the past, observing, for instance, that the Spanish conquest of Mexico required courage and cunning but was “so appalling, and so shaming to us Europeans that I would rather not say anything more about it,” and urging his young readers to consider that perhaps not all factory owners were as vile as Marx portrayed them to be, even though the good owners “against their conscience and their natural instincts, often found themselves treating their workers in the same way”—which is to say, badly.
Conversational, sometimes playful—not the sort of book that would survive vetting by school-system censors these days, but a fine conception and summarizing of the world’s checkered past for young and old.Pub Date: Oct. 11, 2005
ISBN: 0-300-10883-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2005
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