by Alexandra Zapruder ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 15, 2016
An intriguing history of one of the most significant home movies ever recorded.
A meticulous history of an iconic home movie and its contentious afterlife.
Positioned to film John F. Kennedy’s motorcade in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, Abraham Zapruder, to his profound horror, instead recorded the president’s assassination. In this carefully researched investigation, his granddaughter Alexandra Zapruder (editor: Salvaged Pages: Young Writers’ Diaries of the Holocaust, 2004, etc.) examines the fate of that movie, from the first chaotic moments after the tragedy to the present. Her aim, she writes, is to tell not only her grandfather’s story, but to probe “the centrality of the film’s place in the Kennedy assassination debates, how it had challenged norms around the public representation of violence, how it triggered new debates about the media’s role in protecting personal privacy or providing access to information.” In the immediate aftermath, the FBI and Secret Service scrambled to find a lab that would make copies. At the same time, Zapruder was besieged by journalists wanting to buy the movie, demands that he strongly resisted until a sympathetic reporter from LIFE “offered him a safe harbor in a sea of sharks” that included the aggressive young Dan Rather. Zapruder relinquished the original to LIFE and kept a duplicate, retaining rights to the film. Eventually, beset by legal problems, the magazine sold the film back to the family, who deposited it in the National Archives. The author reveals how the film was perceived, frame by frame, in various investigations, including the Warren Commission, which concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone; and by a rash of headstrong conspiracy theorists. After Zapruder’s death, the author’s father, a lawyer, vetted requests to use the film from writers, scholars, the media, and a certain “Los Angeles-based filmmaker” who turned out to be Oliver Stone. Drawing on family and media archives, interviews, and published sources, the author makes a strong case for the film’s “fame, cultural status, and emotional and symbolic value” both for the nation and her family.
An intriguing history of one of the most significant home movies ever recorded.Pub Date: Nov. 15, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4555-7481-0
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Twelve
Review Posted Online: Sept. 5, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2016
Share your opinion of this book
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
Share your opinion of this book
by Jon Krakauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1996
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
Share your opinion of this book
More by Jon Krakauer
BOOK REVIEW
by Jon Krakauer
BOOK REVIEW
by Jon Krakauer
BOOK REVIEW
by Jon Krakauer
More About This Book
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Hey there, book lover.
We’re glad you found a book that interests you!
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Don’t fret. We’ll find you.