A readable exposé that feels like an article-length topic overstretched into a book.
In this nonfiction debut, New Jerseyite and former frat brother Lohse blows the whistle on the distasteful hazing practices he witnessed during his tumultuous time at prestigious Ivy League institution Dartmouth College.
The author comes off like your average middle-class, all-American lad, with good grades and a fair amount of potential in life after leading his high school’s Model United Nations and graduating with honors. Even so, to live the Ivy League dream, he was reduced to getting his Dartmouth-educated grandfather to help him in his quest to be “reconsidered” by the admissions officers. Being insecure and desperate for acceptance, Lohse figured the easiest thing to do would be to join the most notorious fraternity on campus. Little did he know that his stint as a Sigma Alpha Epsilon pledge would nearly ruin his life. The author soon found himself in a socially poisonous environment in which he was forced to guzzle vinegar, Mad Dog 20/20 and even cups of urine. Other mandatory activities in this phony ritualistic ascent to brotherhood included wading in a pool of human excrement, games of blackout-drunk beer pong and even the chance to snort cocaine while listening to Eric Clapton’s song about cocaine. Eventually, his flirtation with the drug got him in trouble with the cops. Lohse’s writing is passable but also peppered with annoying frat slang (he frequently employs the term “boot” as a verb meaning “to vomit”) and awkward metaphors and similes (“Summer was long gone, though—it had faded out like washed out salmon pink shorts”). The author’s story might be more sympathetic had he not eventually decided to haze pledges himself before ratting on his “bros” to Rolling Stone.
A readable exposé that feels like an article-length topic overstretched into a book.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-250-03367-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2014
A standout immigrant coming-of-age story.
In her first nonfiction book, novelist Grande (Dancing with Butterflies, 2009, etc.) delves into her family’s cycle of separation and reunification.
Raised in poverty so severe that spaghetti reminded her of the tapeworms endemic to children in her Mexican hometown, the author is her family’s only college graduate and writer, whose honors include an American Book Award and International Latino Book Award. Though she was too young to remember her father when he entered the United States illegally seeking money to improve life for his family, she idolized him from afar. However, she also blamed him for taking away her mother after he sent for her when the author was not yet 5 years old. Though she emulated her sister, she ultimately answered to herself, and both siblings constantly sought affirmation of their parents’ love, whether they were present or not. When one caused disappointment, the siblings focused their hopes on the other. These contradictions prove to be the narrator’s hallmarks, as she consistently displays a fierce willingness to ask tough questions, accept startling answers, and candidly render emotional and physical violence. Even as a girl, Grande understood the redemptive power of language to define—in the U.S., her name’s literal translation, “big queen,” led to ridicule from other children—and to complicate. In spelling class, when a teacher used the sentence “my mamá loves me” (mi mamá me ama), Grande decided to “rearrange the words so that they formed a question: ¿Me ama mi mamá? Does my mama love me?”
A standout immigrant coming-of-age story.Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4516-6177-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: June 11, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Chronology, photographs and personal knowledge combine to make a memorable commemorative presentation.
Jackie Kennedy's secret service agent Hill and co-author McCubbin team up for a follow-up to Mrs. Kennedy and Me (2012) in this well-illustrated narrative of those five days 50 years ago when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated.
Since Hill was part of the secret service detail assigned to protect the president and his wife, his firsthand account of those days is unique. The chronological approach, beginning before the presidential party even left the nation's capital on Nov. 21, shows Kennedy promoting his “New Frontier” policy and how he was received by Texans in San Antonio, Houston and Fort Worth before his arrival in Dallas. A crowd of more than 8,000 greeted him in Houston, and thousands more waited until 11 p.m. to greet the president at his stop in Fort Worth. Photographs highlight the enthusiasm of those who came to the airports and the routes the motorcades followed on that first day. At the Houston Coliseum, Kennedy addressed the leaders who were building NASA for the planned moon landing he had initiated. Hostile ads and flyers circulated in Dallas, but the president and his wife stopped their motorcade to respond to schoolchildren who held up a banner asking the president to stop and shake their hands. Hill recounts how, after Lee Harvey Oswald fired his fatal shots, he jumped onto the back of the presidential limousine. He was present at Parkland Hospital, where the president was declared dead, and on the plane when Lyndon Johnson was sworn in. Hill also reports the funeral procession and the ceremony in Arlington National Cemetery. “[Kennedy] would have not wanted his legacy, fifty years later, to be a debate about the details of his death,” writes the author. “Rather, he would want people to focus on the values and ideals in which he so passionately believed.”
Chronology, photographs and personal knowledge combine to make a memorable commemorative presentation.Pub Date: Nov. 19, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4767-3149-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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