Bosnia-Herzegovina to hate just about everybody.
Turkish author Mango (Turkey: The Challenge of a New Role, 1994) draws upon official archives and international sources
to piece together a substantial biography of the father of modern Turkey. The "Young Turk" Mustafa Kemal Ataturk rose to prominence fighting the Allies in WWI, distinguishing himself at Gallipoli and Syria and outpacing his rivals to take command of the armed forces. But it was his shrewd, patient politics that made him the savior of his defeated country, as he pitted the overextended Allied occupiers against themselves and eventually drove out the French, the British, the tenacious Italians, and—worst of all from the Turkish point of view—the Greeks. Under Ataturk’s direction, the moribund Ottoman Empire (which in the 17th century had extended to the very gates of Vienna but by the outbreak of WWI was renowned as the "Sick Man of Europe") gave way to a modern parliamentary state. Ruthless, certainly, and vain (but also logical, idealistic, and visionary), Ataturk took steps to revive a war-ravaged economy, consolidated his decimated military, extended suffrage to women, and advocated the equal treatment under the law of Greek and Jewish minorities. Though Turkey is heavily Islamic, he insisted upon the separation of church and state. In his revolutionary zeal Ataturk sometimes brought to mind the excesses of the French Revolution—he banned fezzes and turbans, for instance, and mandated the adoption of European-style hats—but he modernized and stabilized Turkey, and there is an active cult devoted to him among his countrymen today. Mango barrages the reader with details, yet he is never dry. He paints an admiring portrait of a political genius and, in the process, goes a long way in explaining why history has caused Greeks to hate Turks, Turks to hate Greeks, and the citizens of
Bosnia-Herzegovina to hate just about everybody.Pub Date: April 1, 2000
ISBN: 1-58567-011-1
Page Count: 666
Publisher: Overlook
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
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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