A biography of the bizarre figure—monk, healer, advisor to the empress, and tireless lecher—who did so much to weaken the monarchy before the Russian Revolution. Moynahan, former European editor of the Sunday Times of London (The Russian Century, 1994, etc.) uses mostly secondary sources to arrive at a more persuasive judgment, though the details are scarcely less bizarre. Rasputin was born in Siberia probably around 1870, and from an early age showed unusual powers. These came to the attention of the empress, whose son, the heir apparent, was a hemophiliac.The evidence seems inescapable that on a number of occasions Rasputin was able to relieve Alexis of his pain and help him to recover when his other doctors despaired. The deep bond this created with the empress was based on her perception of his goodness, but in the wake of Russia's terrible defeats during the WW I, it gave rise to the widespread belief that the empress and Rasputin were part of a German conspiracy, and that their relationship was scandalous. It was, but not in any sexual sense. The empress used her influence over her husband (``Your poor, weak-willed little hubby,'' as he called himself) to promote policies and ministers that appealed to Rasputin and herself. Traffic near the front was reduced to chaos after Rasputin had a vision that only food wagons were to be allowed to pass. Ministers remained in office so short a time that they hardly bothered to move in. In all this, Rasputin's motives were more self-protective than venal, but his carousing and licentiousness aroused increasing scandal, and led to his assassination by Prince Yusupov, the heir to the greatest fortune in Russia, early in 1917. Moynahan calls Rasputin a ``curiously modern'' figure, and even if the emphasis falls on the curiousness rather than the modernity, he enables the reader to understand a society that by the end gave the impression, as the French ambassador reported, of being run by lunatics. (b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1997
ISBN: 0-679-41930-6
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1997
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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