A sturdy, comprehensive look at the Dalai Lama and his tumultuous world.
A biography of the famed spiritual leader who has lived through complex and contentious times.
British journalist Norman (Secret Lives of the Dalai Lama: The Untold Story of the Holy Men Who Shaped Tibet, From Pre-History to the Present Day, 2010, etc.), who has collaborated with the Dalai Lama on three books, including his autobiography, brings well-grounded authority to his portrayal of a figure revered throughout the world for his joyfulness, generosity, and compassion. Born in 1935, Tenzin Gyatso was identified as the 14th Dalai Lama when he was 2 years old, on the basis of several miraculous occurrences and the child’s demonstration of occult power. Although the author acknowledges that “the skeptical reader will doubtless see this whole account as a classic example of myth-making,” he underscores the Buddhist perspective that “the way things really are” does not depend on empirical verification. Norman vividly depicts the “enchanted” world from which the Dalai Lama emerged, where “every feature of the landscape and every creature dwelling within it falls under the aegis of some sprite or spirit or deity.” Rich in spirituality, Tibet nevertheless was a poor, isolated country. As the Dalai Lama grew up, though focused intensively on his spiritual education, he came to realize that social, political, and material reforms were urgently needed. At 14, he met a foreigner for the first time: a 33-year-old Austrian mountaineer who became his informal tutor, responding to the “boundlessly curious” young man’s many questions about the Western world. Norman lucidly traces the Dalai Lama’s spiritual and academic education, his growing awareness of the internal and external political conflicts that threatened Tibet, and his reluctant decision to go into exile when China invaded the country. At 24, when he led 80,000 Buddhists into India, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru found him “exasperatingly naïve.” The Precious Protector, as he was known, gradually evolved into an astute, occasionally controversial, leader, resolute in his harsh dealings with dissent among rival schools within the Buddhist tradition and eventually renouncing his efforts for Tibet’s independence.
A sturdy, comprehensive look at the Dalai Lama and his tumultuous world.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-544-41658-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
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
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
SEEN & HEARD
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