by Anthony E. Zuiker ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 1, 2011
A well-told tale of rags to Hollywood riches, but a missed opportunity for a deeper exploration of a creative mind.
The creator of one of TV's most successful franchises spills his guts.
Zuiker knows how to tell a story, and like most episodes of CSI, this one begins with a grisly crime scene in a low-rent Las Vegas apartment. There, the real-life inspirations for the author's fictional characters discovered the body of his long-estranged father, dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Zuiker received the news the next morning, after having attended an awards show the night before, and his return to his hometown to deal with the aftermath provides a gripping start to his memoir. The reminiscences about his troubled relationship with his father, a hustler in the old Vegas mold, distinguish the book as more than an ordinary autobiography of a self-made man. But the majority of the narrative is just that, told with humor and a notable lack of ego. Zuiker's ambition to succeed was clear from an early age, and he embarked on a series of often ill-advised get-rich schemes, including selling dice games of his own creation through vending machines and creating advertising ideas for businesses from casinos to adult stores. However, it was his involvement with scholastic public-speaking competitions that led to his eventual triumph in Hollywood. The actual creation of the CSI franchise makes up a relatively small part of the story, though there are a few anecdotes about the stars and the people behind the scenes. The promise of the book's beginning remains largely unfulfilled, however, as Zuiker finds forgiveness for his father's shortcomings but fails to explore their impact on his life.
A well-told tale of rags to Hollywood riches, but a missed opportunity for a deeper exploration of a creative mind.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-06-172549-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Oct. 1, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2011
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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
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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
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