While the accretion of detail upon detail sometimes slows the narrative flow, Stewart provides a textured insight into the...
A lengthy account of a short life.
Stewart (co-author, Hostage to Fortune, 1999; Renaissance Studies/Birkbeck Coll.) paints a detailed portrait of the Elizabethan Age as reflected through the fortunes of the extended Sidney family. Given that poet Philip Sidney’s uncle, Robert Dudley, was Queen Elizabeth’s paramour, and his father, Henry Sidney, spent years administering both Wales and Ireland for the crown, any account of Philip’s life will necessarily provide a wealth of insight into the workings of the court. Stewart has done extensive research and amply sets the stage for Philip’s considerable achievements by chronicling his education and youthful travels on the continent. More importantly, Stewart shows how Philip’s worldview was shaped by a series of mentors, among them Hubert Languet, who recognized Philip’s potential—a potential defined as much by his family tree as by his considerable intellectual gifts. Those seeking a nuanced exposition of Sidney’s poetic achievement, however, should look elsewhere: Stewart seems to be more interested in the public than the private man. The focus, therefore, is on how Philip made his way at court, which required connections, tact, and good fortune. Moreover, royal recognition was a mixed blessing. His father, for instance, was dispatched to the backwater of Ireland for several years, and his service to the crown precariously stretched family finances. Philip, too, had to take care lest he fall afoul of the queen. For the most part he succeeded, tempering intellectual curiosity with circumspection, particularly with respect to religion. Before he was killed in battle at 31 during a campaign in the Low Countries, he had not only produced the poetry for which he is known today, but had shown great potential as a statesman.
While the accretion of detail upon detail sometimes slows the narrative flow, Stewart provides a textured insight into the society that shaped the poet. (14 illustrations, 13 b&w plates)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-312-28287-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2001
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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