by Brad Paisley and David Wild ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 2011
Both sentimental and inspirational—for fans only.
With the assistance of Rolling Stone contributing editor Wild (He Is…I Say: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Neil Diamond, 2008, etc.), country-music sensation Paisley pridefully shares his thoughts and thanks on a charmed “life in progress.”
Born in West Virginia to a schoolteacher mother and a highway worker, the acclaimed performer enjoyed musically inspired roots peopled with wise advocates who helped shape his moralistic sensibilities. The author fondly recalls the guitar he received from his grandfather, a lover of instrumental country music, on his eighth Christmas. With enthusiastic prose, Paisley writes of a swift ascent to greatness beginning in the third grade, when he asked to play guitar in church. Under the careful mentorship of professional musician Clarence Goddard, his talent branched out to songwriting at age 12 and a warm-up performance at the Wheeling Jamboree. The singer’s good fortune quickly blossomed in Nashville with a first album and the formation of a multi-city tour, what he calls a “curious kind of traveling circus.” Paisley writes of his indebtedness to bands like Alabama, Restless Heart and the Beatles, and to legendary guitarist Buck Owens and the Grand Ole Opry. There are also gushing accolades from country-music luminaries like Vince Gill, Carrie Underwood and Roy Clark, who calls him a “true superstar.” If Paisley is repetitive with personal facts, his praise of hard work is redeeming and honorable; he admits that he would be “at best mediocre if not for ingenuity and sweat.” This sage motto, coupled with the author’s obvious adoration for country music, makes the book ideal for a younger generation of devotees.
Both sentimental and inspirational—for fans only.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4516-2552-3
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Howard Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 1, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2011
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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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