An articulate, unflinchingly honest, and touching account brimming with joy, heartbreak, and love.
In this memoir, an ad agency powerhouse recounts turning a family tragedy into an opportunity for youngsters who learn differently, gaining an understanding about himself in the process.
Had Pesky chosen to write a book simply detailing his life and many accomplishments, it likely would have been intriguing. But what he has produced is deeper and more emotionally riveting, as the author peels back and examines the layers of his often difficult relationship with his eldest son, Lee. While filled with wonderful tales of personal and professional fulfillment, the narrative is propelled by a singular, excruciating loss. In November 1995, 30-year-old Lee died from the ravages of a voracious brain tumor. The memoir opens with the painful account of Lee’s illness and death, then toggles to the author’s impressive journey up the ladder of success. Born in 1933 in New York City, he grew up in the Bronx and Queens. After college and a stint in the military, he attended Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business. An amusing, self-deprecating vignette depicts how a major snowstorm contributed to his Dartmouth admission. Fast-forward to May 1967. Pesky, an ad agency account executive, and his four partners took a leap of faith and opened their own agency—Scali, McCabe, Sloves. The gamble paid off handsomely, both financially and in industry accolades, and there are many delightful tales and now-classic commercial taglines from the author’s high-flying years in advertising. But back at home, the bright and mischievous Lee was struggling, hampered by his learning disabilities, motor-skill difficulty, and a father who wanted to help but couldn’t yet appreciate his son’s unique talents. Since Lee’s death, Pesky has channeled his grief and self-recriminations into what he considers his most important project—the creation of the Lee Pesky Learning Center, which has received national acclaim for its groundbreaking work. Much of the author’s candid and moving memoir—written with Aulum and featuring a collection of family photographs—focuses on the center’s crucial work. Although this intermittently slows down the narrative, the pages contain a wealth of valuable information for the family, friends, and teachers of Lee’s fellow travelers.
An articulate, unflinchingly honest, and touching account brimming with joy, heartbreak, and love.Pub Date: Sept. 7, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5107-6635-8
Page Count: 232
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 6, 2021
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
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
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