Ultimately, Weber sees solo cycling as a metaphor for the solitary experience of being alive. He wonders if every crucible...
In 2011, at the age of 57, New York Times reporter Weber (As They See ‘Em: A Fan’s Travels in the Land of Umpires, 2009, etc.) embarked on his second cross-country bicycle trip, an adventure as much transcendental as transcontinental.
Written mostly in real time, the book reflects the author’s philosophy of cycling: Moving forward is the cure for all ills. Woven through this generally engaging chronicle of a west-to-east odyssey are asides on his parents, old friends, loves lost and new, a pivotal journey through North Vietnam and his post-trip “heart event.” But the real strength of the book is on the road, where incidents coalesce into chapters. A long bike ride is a good story to tell, however meandering, and Weber admits that he did it again due to his encroaching mortality; his checklist for adventure wasn’t keeping pace with his advancing age. Unlike his first cross-country sojourn nearly 20 years before, this time, the author brought a smartphone, a computer and constant feedback from readers following his ongoing blog for the Times. This time, the writing, not self-elevation, would be the defining part of the journey. A Manhattanite keenly aware of his provincialism, Weber regards America’s geographic and cultural expanse as exotic: New York is a vertical realm, not so the rest of the country. Measuring miles by the rhythmic pumping of his legs, experiencing the country in topographical segments, Weber lived the quixotic notion that ordeals can be as satisfying as pleasures, and he makes us believe it. “You can’t gobble up the nation, mile after mile under your own power, without assimilating a sense of its greatness,” he writes, discovering anew how geography helps define the identities of thousands of towns and millions of citizens.
Ultimately, Weber sees solo cycling as a metaphor for the solitary experience of being alive. He wonders if every crucible of middle age is about defying impermanence and death. If true, Weber does it with brio.Pub Date: March 18, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4516-9501-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
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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