The author’s wide-ranging knowledge and generous insights (gained through interviews with many of Parcells’s associates)...
An often-perceptive, warts-and-all account by veteran sportswriter Gutman (My Father, the Coach, 1976, etc.) of one of football’s most interesting, successful, and mercurial coaches.
If the National Football League’s coaching community has a patron saint of lost causes, it has to be Parcells. Famed for turning around moribund franchises—he’s taken two perennial losers (the New York Giants and the New England Patriots) to the Super Bowl, and coached a third (the New York Jets) from a 1–15 record to the league’s penultimate game—Parcells’s great leadership ability comes wrapped in a peculiar package. A born-and-bred “Jersey guy,” Parcells can be at any given moment folksy or imperious, warm-hearted or sharp-tongued. Known as much for building winners as he is for leaving them in dramatic fashion—he ditched the Giants after winning his second Super Bowl in 1991; he broke with the Patriots after their trip to the championship game, an event that required league intervention to settle; and he left the Jets with a year remaining on his contract—Parcells is also famously loyal to the cadre of colleagues that have been part of his coaching staff for nearly two decades. (Two of them, Ray Handley and Al Groh, succeeded Parcells at the Giants and Jets; while a third, Bill Belichick, was designated Parcells’s successor at the Jets until he orchestrated his own rancorous departure to the Patriots.) Taking readers through Parcells’s peripatetic coaching journey (which included stops at Wichita State, Army, Texas Tech, Air Force, and three NFL teams), Gutman sheds light on his subject’s offbeat brand of genius.
The author’s wide-ranging knowledge and generous insights (gained through interviews with many of Parcells’s associates) make this solid off-season reading for Parcells fans and detractors alike.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-7867-0731-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2000
Stale loaf from a famous French bakery. (16 pp. b&w photographs, not seen)
A familiar, cursory look at Napoleon’s accomplishments and failures: martial, civil, and cultural.
The British author of several painters’ biographies, Wilson-Smith has written about Bonaparte before from that point of view (Napoleon and His Artists, not reviewed). Here, he divides his brief work into two principal sections. The first summarizes Napoleon’s rise to power, his stunning series of military victories, the growth and decline of the French empire, Waterloo, Elba, St. Helena, and death. (The author takes no position on the question of murder by poison.) For those who have read elsewhere of Napoleon or paid attention in Western Civ, there is not much new save an occasional gripping detail—e.g., the forces of Wellington and Napoleon camped only about 5,000 yards apart the night before the Big One. Too often, Wilson-Smith reaches into his analogy kit and comes up with the unremarkable: “The last and most terrible person to try to play a Napoleonic role in Europe was Adolf Hitler.” The second half points out Bonaparte’s other well-known achievements: stimulating scholarly interest in Egypt (the author cracks wise, noting that Napoleon “looked ridiculous” in a kaftan and turban), establishing and perhaps even perfecting the French bureaucracy, creating and formalizing the Code Napoléon, doing good deeds in public finance and education, building roads, and supporting some artists and writers. Once again, an occasional detail with a keen edge or a crisp sentence animates the text: Wilson-Smith notes that the French killed some 15,000 wolves between 1805–15 to protect their livestock and observes that Bonaparte “disliked clever women and suspected that those who could look after themselves were not truly feminine.” He ends by expressing a more-than-grudging admiration for the general responsible for some five million deaths and unimaginable destruction. Of genuine interest are Wilson-Smith’s analyses of the various 19th-century paintings of the Emperor.
Stale loaf from a famous French bakery. (16 pp. b&w photographs, not seen)Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-7867-1089-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2002
An impassioned, non-manipulative memorial, timed to coincide with the fourth anniversary of 9/11.
Fontana tugs at the heartstrings in this engrossing, inspiring 9/11 memoir.
The author married firefighter Dave Fontana on September 11, 1993, and they were supposed to spend their eighth wedding anniversary toddling hand-in-hand through the Whitney Museum. But Dave never made it home that day; he died at Ground Zero. Marian mourned, gave countless interviews to reporters, planned Dave’s wake, wrote his eulogy and conferred with other widows. Gradually, she became a skilled political organizer, founding the 9-11 Widows’ and Victims’ Families Association. She used her newfound media cachet to educate people about the lousy wages firefighters are paid and to weigh in on the debates surrounding compensation to victims’ families. She met with mayors and senators, and she now serves on the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation’s Family Advisory Committee. Fontana is a good writer, with an ear for phrasing and a focus on small, poignant details: We see her plucking strands of salt-and-pepper hair from Dave’s hairbrush, because she needs a sample of his DNA and brushing her teeth with his toothbrush, “secretly pretend[ing] I was being kissed.”
An impassioned, non-manipulative memorial, timed to coincide with the fourth anniversary of 9/11.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-7432-4624-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2005
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