An amalgam of entertaining vignettes written in an informal, rambling style.
The veteran Ultimate Fighting Championship announcer shares his life story.
The central portion of Buffer's memoir chronicles his recent knee injury (sustained, ironically, while announcing at a UFC event) and his commitment to making a complete recovery. However, it is his account of life outside of the UFC that provides key insights into the very full personality behind the “Voice of the Octagon.” Growing up in Malibu with a hard-charging father, a former Marine turned novelist, Buffer had an adventure-filled childhood. He achieved financial success working at a series of telemarketing companies and went on to do well in the high-stakes world of competitive poker. After discovering as an adult that boxing announcer Michael Buffer was his long-lost brother, Bruce formed a business partnership with his famous sibling and was involved in the lucrative decision to trademark Michael’s catchphrase, “Let’s get ready to rumble!” Their relationship sparked Bruce’s desire to become an announcer himself for the then-new sport of mixed martial arts, which has gained significant popularity in recent years. Interspersed throughout the book are “Bufferisms” drawn from the lessons he learned on his tumultuous life's journey; they offer inspirational, though often pedantic, words of wisdom about how to achieve success in business and personal relations. Of course, Buffer also includes plenty of behind-the-scenes stories about partying and fighting alongside some of the biggest names in MMA, including BJ Penn, Chuck Liddell, Randy Couture and Tito Ortiz. Outsized personalities from Hollywood and the world of competitive poker make cameo appearances as well.
An amalgam of entertaining vignettes written in an informal, rambling style.Pub Date: May 14, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-307-95391-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Crown Archetype
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
Skilled and graceful exploration of the soul of an astonishing human being.
Full-immersion journalist Kidder (Home Town, 1999, etc.) tries valiantly to keep up with a front-line, muddy-and-bloody general in the war against infectious disease in Haiti and elsewhere.
The author occasionally confesses to weariness in this gripping account—and why not? Paul Farmer, who has an M.D. and a Ph.D. from Harvard, appears to be almost preternaturally intelligent, productive, energetic, and devoted to his causes. So trotting alongside him up Haitian hills, through international airports and Siberian prisons and Cuban clinics, may be beyond the capacity of a mere mortal. Kidder begins with a swift account of his first meeting with Farmer in Haiti while working on a story about American soldiers, then describes his initial visit to the doctor’s clinic, where the journalist felt he’d “encountered a miracle.” Employing guile, grit, grins, and gifts from generous donors (especially Boston contractor Tom White), Farmer has created an oasis in Haiti where TB and AIDS meet their Waterloos. The doctor has an astonishing rapport with his patients and often travels by foot for hours over difficult terrain to treat them in their dwellings (“houses” would be far too grand a word). Kidder pauses to fill in Farmer’s amazing biography: his childhood in an eccentric family sounds like something from The Mosquito Coast; a love affair with Roald Dahl’s daughter ended amicably; his marriage to a Haitian anthropologist produced a daughter whom he sees infrequently thanks to his frenetic schedule. While studying at Duke and Harvard, Kidder writes, Farmer became obsessed with public health issues; even before he’d finished his degrees he was spending much of his time in Haiti establishing the clinic that would give him both immense personal satisfaction and unsurpassed credibility in the medical worlds he hopes to influence.
Skilled and graceful exploration of the soul of an astonishing human being.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2003
ISBN: 0-375-50616-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2003
A courageous and thought-provoking memoir.
A bestselling memoirist’s account of coping with an unexpected midlife evolution in sexual identity.
When Wizenberg, who runs the popular Orangette blog, received a jury duty summons, she never thought that it would lead to divorce. In court, her eyes were immediately drawn to a female defense attorney dressed in a men’s suit. Her thoughts lingered on the attractive stranger after each day’s proceedings. But guilt at being “a woman wearing a wedding ring” made the author feel increasingly guilty for the obsession that seized her. Her husband, Brandon, a successful Seattle restaurateur, and their daughter were the “stars” that guided her path; the books she had written revolved like planets around the sun of their relationship and the restaurants they had founded together. However, in the weeks that followed, Wizenberg shocked herself by telling her husband about the attraction and suggesting that they open their marriage to polyamorous experimentation. Reading the work of writers like Adrienne Rich who had discovered their lesbianism later in life, Wizenberg engaged in deep, sometimes-painful self-interrogation. The author remembered the story of a married uncle, a man she resembled, who came out as gay and then later died of AIDS as well as a brief lesbian flirtation in late adolescence where “nothing happened.” Eventually, Wizenberg began dating the lawyer and fell in love with her. Wizenberg then began the painful process of separating herself from Brandon and, later, from their restaurant businesses that she had quietly seen as impediments to her writing. Feeling unfulfilled by Nora, a self-professed “stone top” who preferred to give pleasure rather than receive it, Wizenberg began to date a nonbinary person named Ash. Through that relationship, she came to embrace both gender and sexual fluidity. Interwoven throughout with research insights into the complexity of female sexual identity, Wizenberg’s book not only offers a glimpse into the shifting nature of selfhood; it also celebrates one woman’s hard-won acceptance of her own sexual difference.
A courageous and thought-provoking memoir.Pub Date: May 12, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4197-4299-6
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
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