Old-fashioned, wistful stories that will appeal to fans of Geist’s previous books.
The Emmy Award–winning correspondent of CBS Sunday Morning reminisces about the wonderful days of his youth.
During the 1960s, Geist (Way off the Road: Discovering the Peculiar Charms of Small Town America, 2007, etc.) spent his summers working at a resort—the Arrowhead Lodge—owned by his aunt and uncle. In the middle of nowhere, down a winding road, the lodge provided the author with a place to work and make friends, drink beer, and meet girls. In this memoir, Geist takes readers back to those bygone days, sharing his escapades of what life was like for a young man with few experiences under his belt. The author often uses folksy humor to contrast those times with today. “A gas station attendant was a guy who filled your gas tank, checked your oil, coolant and battery fluids, and tire pressure,” he writes. “But those old gas stations did not sell hats and T-shirts, sixty-two different candy bars, fifty-seven kinds of refrigerated beverages, including twenty brands of bottle water. There were no ‘brands’ of water, only God’s. It was free. I know. Sounds crazy.” Threaded throughout this lightweight narrative are amusing, harmless memories of working in the kitchen during rush hour, cleaning out the open-air septic system, and fraternizing with the girls who moved in and out of Geist’s orbit. His portrayals of his fellow co-workers and his family are well-rounded, showing the good and bad in each individual. Geist’s writing is consistently nostalgic as he shows how those carefree summers helped mold him into the man he became. The book is a quick, pleasant read that effectively reflects how his time at the lodge showed him that “life is more difficult and rewarding and fun when you manage to do things your way.”
Old-fashioned, wistful stories that will appeal to fans of Geist’s previous books.Pub Date: May 7, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5387-2980-9
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Feb. 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
A short biographical corrective regarding the Jewish- American folk hero, and some previously unpublished correspondence, both disappointingly slight. In the first third of this volume, Ohio-based critic Young attempts to revise the myth of Emma Lazarus (18491887), who penned ``The New Colossus'' in celebration of the Statue of Liberty. The author claims that Lazarus was not introverted and somber, as her sister Josephine described her soon after her death, but in fact a vibrant and social woman. Young successfully discredits some of Lazarus's previous biographers, including the one who in 1938 wrote that while passing the Statue of Liberty during her final illness Lazarus was ``too weak'' to notice the plaque on which her poem was inscribed—the plaque was not placed there until 1903, 16 years after the poet's death. The author is also convincing when she portrays Lazarus as a conflicted personality: a defender of the Jews who derided European Jewry; a 19th-century woman who insisted, ``I am not & improbable as it sounds, I don't want to be [engaged].'' The text, however, does not satisfactorily address these conflicts, and Young's interpretations of Lazarus's work are plodding. Lazarus's letters, which comprise the bulk of the book, are more interesting, though they too raise more questions than they answer. Correspondents include Helena deKay Gilder, wife of Century editor Richard Watson Gilder; Nathaniel Hawthorne's daughter, Rose Hawthorne Lathrop; E.R.A. Seligman, son of the prominent Jewish banker Joseph Seligman; and Henry James. Unfortunately, all the correspondence is one-sided (from Lazarus to her friends, except in the case of James), which makes it difficult to gauge the relationships in full. Instructive, but by no means the final word on the subject.
Pub Date: May 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-8276-0516-1
Page Count: 384
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1995
A biography of—and tract on—Moses Fleetwood Walker, baseball's first black big-league star. Walker was born in 1857 to a modestly prosperous family living in the relatively liberal and integrated eastern Ohio town of Mount Pleasant. Had he never picked up a bat while a student at Oberlin College, he would probably still have been an estimable figure in African-American history: In addition to being a proficient catcher (the sporting tabloids of the day offered effusive, albeit grudging, praise for his defensive prowess), he was the holder of patents for an artillery shell prototype and several other inventions, as well as the author of Our Home Colony: The Past, Present and Future of the Negro Race in America, an influential treatise. However, the light-skinned Walker lived precariously along the fault lines of America's racial tensions—a fact that Zang, a freelance journalist and sports historian, makes clear in many heavy-handed passages throughout the book. He was a touchstone for the many white fears and suspicions that surfaced in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, often in the guise of pseudo- scientific studies. After baseball's 1889 interdict on blacks, Walker got into trouble—some of it incidental, some not. He was tried for homicide and acquitted, but he was not so lucky in a postal fraud case; he wrote Our Home Colony during his prison term. After that, Walker was a moderately successful entrepreneur until his death in 1924. Like many pioneering black figures, he has achieved greater recognition posthumously, receiving honors from Oberlin and elsewhere. During his life, it's clear that Moses Fleetwood Walker was as much the victim as the embodiment of the American Dream. Impassioned, but occasionally florid and meandering.
Pub Date: May 25, 1995
ISBN: 0-8032-4913-6
Page Count: 170
Publisher: Univ. of Nebraska
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1995
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