by Abigail Foerstner ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 2007
A sturdy account of an important if uncontroversial figure in American space research.
A wholly inclusive biography of the famed physicist, often called the father of space science, from Foerstner (Science and News Writing/Northwestern Univ.; Picturing Utopia: Bertha Shambaugh and the Amana Photographers, 2000).
Son of a small-town Iowa lawyer, Van Allen (1914–2006) grew up enthralled by high-tech devices of the 1920s—crystal radios, automotive engines, etc.—and he maintained this interest throughout college. World War II and his Ph.D. arrived simultaneously, and he played a central role in developing the proximity fuse, a critically important wartime invention. Success designing an instrument that could survive being shot from a cannon proved useful when he pioneered upper-atmosphere research firing captured German V2 rockets after the war. He continued working with balloons and smaller rockets, developing skills that vaulted him into headlines after Russia launched Sputnik in 1957. When the United States hastily launched its own satellite four months later, choosing the payload was easy because only Van Allen had an instrument ready to fly, which provided the first picture of the eponymous Van Allen radiation belts surrounding Earth. Over the next 30 years, he served as a principal investigator for two-dozen space missions that mapped the turbulent space of our solar system, with its solar wind, massive solar storms and cosmic rays. His probes—in addition to those of his students—continue to transmit from the edge of our solar system, eight billion miles away. Although a leading scientific figure, Van Allen’s rather staid personal life creates difficulties for the biographer. He was popular with colleagues and students and a good husband, and he made few enemies and avoided politics. Foerstner does a fine job explaining Van Allen’s work, but readers outside academia may wish for less of her exhaustive research, which includes biographies of his and his wife’s ancestors, domestic details (including what the bride wore at his wedding) and details of innumerable committees on which he served.
A sturdy account of an important if uncontroversial figure in American space research.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-87745-999-6
Page Count: 396
Publisher: Univ. of Iowa
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2007
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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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