by Atilla Bektore ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A
A proficient, knowledgeable but overly detailed recounting of a life impacted by global history.
One man’s journey across Turkey, Russia and the United States, propelled by the historical events of the 20th century.
In an apt opening for his story, Bektore discusses his nomadic ancestors and their forced migrations during the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the start of World War I. Living in Soviet Turkmenistan, his father was a teacher and writer with nationalist leanings. Traumatically arrested by Soviet forces, he spent the next two decades in prison. Forced to move without him, the author’s family left Russia and settled in Turkey. Bektore writes matter-of-factly about growing up against the backdrop of World War II and Stalin’s rule, starting higher education and meeting his wife. He received an engineering degree, fulfilled a compulsory tour in the Turkish military and, in one of his many engineering jobs tied to contemporary political events, worked at a hydroelectric plant near Istanbul. His father returned to the family in 1956, but despite the reunion, as well as a secure professional future and a comfortable way of life, Bektore again harnessed his nomadic genes and moved to America and found engineering work on nuclear-power projects at the height of the Cold War. While Bektore and his family’s journeys are borne of necessity, not adventure, many of his tales are so rote it keeps them from taking more compelling turns. Ever the professional engineer, the author relays his story in an observant, technical manner, and while the parallels to world history are interesting, readers may wish for more moving insight into the people in his life.
A proficient, knowledgeable but overly detailed recounting of a life impacted by global history.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-0-595-38524-9
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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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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