An impassioned plea for humanity to evolve toward what the author describes as “one of its greatest qualities: mercy.”
The French cinema icon shares her post-film journey of animal activism.
Known around the world as a rebellious, sometimes-scandalous sex symbol, Bardot (Brigitte Bardot: My Life in Fashion, 2016, etc.) retired from acting in 1973 to focus on advocating for animal rights. In this memoir, she provides an intimate look at her motives and experiences in fighting for the well-being of animals. Among the first celebrities to use their fame to draw public awareness to issues of animal cruelty, Bardot delivered international attention to the plight of seals when she arrived in Canada in 1977. The author implicitly connects her past objectification as an actor with the situation facing animals, as she frequently discusses her animal instinct, nature, and soul. “I’ve known treachery, perversity, faithlessness, ingratitude, and cowardice that man is capable of,” she writes. “I’ve hated humanity’s penchant for destruction and became animal in order not to belong to the inhuman cohort that made me so ashamed.” Chronicling more than four decades, the narrative is an unapologetic story of how Bardot dedicated her considerable star power to improving animal welfare. Since her retirement from acting, she has found herself on the front lines of rescue efforts around the world, and she established a nonprofit organization, La Fondation Brigitte Bardot, to advance public awareness and improve conditions for all animals. This is not a book of theories about animal rights; nor does it provide a detailed, linear description of the author’s work. Indeed, parts of the narrative are scattered and jarred by awkward transitions. Still, Bardot shares an emotional, highly personal testimony of her decades of animal activism. Some of the firsthand accounts of deplorable animal conditions may be too intense for some readers, but they serve as urgent calls to action. Throughout, Bardot acknowledges both the individuality of animals and the animal nature of humanity, connecting the dots between species with a heartfelt memoir of personal and social change.
An impassioned plea for humanity to evolve toward what the author describes as “one of its greatest qualities: mercy.”Pub Date: May 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-948924-02-3
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Arcade
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2019
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
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
