Well short of definitive, but an entertaining summary of Cousteau’s life and career.
A warm biography of one of the icons of the environmental movement.
Matsen (Titanic’s Last Secrets, 2008, etc.) begins with the party where, as a young naval officer in 1936, Jacques-Yves Cousteau (1910–1997) met Simone Melchior, the admiral’s daughter who became the mother figure for the crew of Cousteau’s famed vessel, the Calypso. Cousteau arrived at the party with a movie camera, filming everything and instantly bewitching Simone. Matsen then shifts to Cousteau’s rather odd childhood. Raised partly in France, partly in America, he was the second son of a man who worked as factotum for a millionaire American playboy. Lonely and rebellious as a child, Cousteau discovered a passion for film at a time when the medium was in its infancy. Barred by injuries from his chosen career as a naval aviator, he began swimming in the sea to rebuild the strength in his arms—and discovered a new world. Almost everything else in his life grew out of that discovery. During World War II, in between espionage missions for the Resistance, Cousteau conducted experiments in underwater photography. After the war, he perfected the Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus (SCUBA), allowing him unprecedented freedom of movement underwater. His first glimpses of the undersea world, in a short film documenting shipwrecks, took the cinema world by storm. Cousteau sure-handedly built that success into an undersea empire, finding backers, acquiring and fitting out the Calypso, traveling the world’s oceans to create new films and developing new technology to allow even more spectacular diving feats. Matsen sketches the broad outlines of his career, but the inner Cousteau—by all accounts an intensely private man—never really emerges. In between accounts of the voyages, honors and growing environmental advocacy, we learn of family feuds, tragedies and Cousteau’s long-term affair with Francine Triplet, whom he married shortly after Simone’s death. Unfortunately, few of his close companions or family members appear in these pages, and those who do share little to reveal the man behind the mask.
Well short of definitive, but an entertaining summary of Cousteau’s life and career.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-375-42413-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2009
A surprisingly warm and consistently outspoken retrospective for both fans and celebrity followers.
The self-described “king of all media” shares personal introspection and favorite celebrity interviews in his first book in two decades.
Stern (Miss America, 1995, etc.) is in top form in this entertaining amalgam of intimate confessional and Q-and-A archive. Opting for an older, wiser perspective this time around, the author strips away the juvenile raunch and sophomoric humor that made his first books runaway bestsellers. The book’s introduction, a meaty, contemplative 19-page affair, finds Stern, 65, candidly discussing his struggles with OCD, random regrets (namely his treatment of Robin Williams and Rosie O’Donnell), greatest moments (interviews with Conan O’Brien and Paul McCartney, animal rescue efforts), his move to SiriusXM in 2006, and the day he inexplicably took a rare show-day off to attend to an undisclosed cancer scare. It’s a kinder, gentler, all-grown-up side of the shock jock, which he credits to aggressive psychotherapy and his second wife, Beth. However, it’s the intimate, provocative celebrity interviews that make up the bulk of this weighty tome and which the author admits “represent my best work and show my personal evolution.” With his advancing age came wisdom, humility, empathy, and a dramatic sea change in the show’s direction and focus, as evidenced in more nuanced, probing interviews with Courtney Love, Joan Rivers, Michael J. Fox, Chris Cornell, and Lady Gaga, among others. Stern introduces each conversation with his personal perspective on the individual and the impression they made. His honest conversations with actors, music legends, and others represent an eclectic cross-section of celebrities, and his questions range from the piercing to the downright ridiculous. Perhaps the book’s most startling interview segments are those with a pre-presidential Donald Trump, whom Stern has interviewed dozens of times. Throughout the book, which is divided into thematic sections (“Sex & Relationships,” “Money & Fame,” “Drugs & Sobriety,” “Gone Too Soon,” etc.), the author’s personal growth and enduring legacy as a broadcast pioneer and unique profiler are on full display.
A surprisingly warm and consistently outspoken retrospective for both fans and celebrity followers.Pub Date: May 14, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5011-9429-0
Page Count: 560
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2019
Startling, at times pretentious in its self-regard, but ultimately breathtaking: The Lost Weekend for the under-25 set.
Frey’s lacerating, intimate debut chronicles his recovery from multiple addictions with adrenal rage and sprawling prose.
After ten years of alcoholism and three years of crack addiction, the 23-year-old author awakens from a blackout aboard a Chicago-bound airplane, “covered with a colorful mixture of spit, snot, urine, vomit and blood.” While intoxicated, he learns, he had fallen from a fire escape and damaged his teeth and face. His family persuades him to enter a Minnesota clinic, described as “the oldest Residential Drug and Alcohol Facility in the World.” Frey’s enormous alcohol habit, combined with his use of “Cocaine . . . Pills, acid, mushrooms, meth, PCP and glue,” make this a very rough ride, with the DTs quickly setting in: “The bugs crawl onto my skin and they start biting me and I try to kill them.” Frey captures with often discomforting acuity the daily grind and painful reacquaintance with human sensation that occur in long-term detox; for example, he must undergo reconstructive dental surgery without anesthetic, an ordeal rendered in excruciating detail. Very gradually, he confronts the “demons” that compelled him towards epic chemical abuse, although it takes him longer to recognize his own culpability in self-destructive acts. He effectively portrays the volatile yet loyal relationships of people in recovery as he forms bonds with a damaged young woman, an addicted mobster, and an alcoholic judge. Although he rejects the familiar 12-step program of AA, he finds strength in the principles of Taoism and (somewhat to his surprise) in the unflinching support of family, friends, and therapists, who help him avoid a relapse. Our acerbic narrator conveys urgency and youthful spirit with an angry, clinical tone and some initially off-putting prose tics—irregular paragraph breaks, unpunctuated dialogue, scattered capitalization, few commas—that ultimately create striking accruals of verisimilitude and plausible human portraits.
Startling, at times pretentious in its self-regard, but ultimately breathtaking: The Lost Weekend for the under-25 set.Pub Date: April 15, 2003
ISBN: 0-385-50775-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2003
BOOK TO SCREEN
4 Book Adaptations to Check Out In December
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