A slice of serious history that’s also pretty as a picture.
An elegant biography, abundant in historical and cultural detail, of the 18th-century pottery magnate.
Josiah Wedgwood (1730–95) played a crucial role in the evolution of English manufacture as it made its way out of feudalism into the industrial age. He was a son of the Enlightenment, aware that he would get the high-quality products he sought only from artisans who got a fair shake in terms of wages and benefits from an employer who recognized their skills and craftsmanship. Wedgwood was willing to provide those benefits, including education for his employees’ children, decent housing, medical benefits (in an industry notorious for poisonous materials that induced health problems), and pensions—all revolutionary notions in those days, as was his belief that his workers understood the value of money. He tinkered tirelessly with qualities of his clay, conducted chemical research to eliminate lead from glazes, and investigated the different kinds of firings being developed around the world, just as he experimented with the idea of a production line. He also cultivated his scant but profitable connections with the aristocracy and the royal household. Wedgwood had to compete on a playing field that included Spode and Sèvres, but his willingness to accept unique commissions won him customers from American colonists to Russian royalty. He worked to standardize products for consistency and availability, with such success that Wedgwood blue jasper ware has been popular for 225 years. Such work, Dolan (Ladies of the Grand Tour, 2001, etc.) reminds readers in a nicely phrased appreciation, “represents elite taste without social prejudice. The name carries the status of an old master, but is accessible to those without aristocratic wealth.” This shrewd portrait of a remarkable life also renders with vivid particularity the time and place in which Wedgwood worked his magic
A slice of serious history that’s also pretty as a picture.Pub Date: Oct. 11, 2004
ISBN: 0-670-03346-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2004
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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