Of natural interest to Jeopardy! buffs, but solid entertainment as well for readers who don’t tune in.
The category is books by former champion players of the long-running game show Jeopardy! This entry may be the most astute yet under that growing rubric.
Just a month behind Braniac (2006), a sizable lesson in trivia by big winner Ken Jennings, this cleverly executed volume displays the obligatory acumen and erudition, as well as considerable wit and writing ability. After all, Harris has been a stand-up comic, a radio humorist and a TV crime-show writer. His text reports on how he won, lost and played the game a decade ago. Harris did frequent finger exercises, the better to hit the buzzer like a Jedi. He assiduously studied reference works jammed into apartments shared with supportive girlfriends. He memorized state flowers and national capitals, obscure body parts and foreign film directors, vice-presidents of the US and read the novels of E.M. Forster. He explored geographical mysteries and brushed up on his Shakespeare. He became a five-time winner (the limit at the time) and went on to play other champions at several tournaments. Harris dramatically sets forth each game, complete with detailed green-room byplay and views from the contestant’s lectern. It’s the epic tale: Appearing on Jeopardy! was a defining moment in the author’s life. Yet here, he goes beyond backstage information and tips on mnemonics to build a substantive memoir of family and growth. It’s about love and a burgeoning devotion to history and science, to fun and facts and connections. For his next report, we look forward to his departure from Trebekistan.
Of natural interest to Jeopardy! buffs, but solid entertainment as well for readers who don’t tune in.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-307-33956-4
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2006
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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