A retread of old material repackaged as an inspirational guidebook. Though aiming to inspire readers of all ages, this will...
The astronaut recounts life lessons learned from his historic Apollo 11 moonwalk in 1969 and beyond.
In this rambling, loosely structured, and frequently awkward hybrid of memoir and motivational self-help guide, Aldrin (Mission to Mars: My Vision for Space Exploration, 2013, etc.) treads heavily on familiar ground touched on extensively in other accounts of the moon mission, such as First on the Moon (1970), co-authored with fellow astronauts Neil Armstrong and Michael Collins, and Aldrin’s own previous memoirs, also relating to the Apollo 11 mission and his later struggles with alcoholism and depression. Aldrin attempts to shed light on some of the lessons he learned along the way. The author focuses each chapter on an inspirational message—e.g., “Keep your mind open to possibilities,” “Maintain your spirit of adventure,” “Keep a young mind-set at every age.” The message is sometimes disjointed. In “Second Comes Right After First,” Aldrin initially tells of how he came to embrace being the second man to step foot on the moon, following Armstrong, yet he spends much of the chapter asserting his claims for having been “first” in other areas of space exploration. Though the author has remained a dedicated and forceful advocate for the United States to continue planetary exploration, generously participating in fundraisers and providing educational support whenever needed, he has also increasingly applied his celebrity status to numerous guest appearances on TV shows such as 30 Rock, The Big Bang Theory, and The Simpsons and as a contestant on Dancing with the Stars. A few of his lessons boast of these appearances and his ability to successfully mix with the various talent.
A retread of old material repackaged as an inspirational guidebook. Though aiming to inspire readers of all ages, this will likely appeal to an older readership and devoted fans of Aldrin.Pub Date: April 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4262-1649-7
Page Count: 224
Publisher: National Geographic
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2016
A quirky wonder of a book.
A Peabody Award–winning NPR science reporter chronicles the life of a turn-of-the-century scientist and how her quest led to significant revelations about the meaning of order, chaos, and her own existence.
Miller began doing research on David Starr Jordan (1851-1931) to understand how he had managed to carry on after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake destroyed his work. A taxonomist who is credited with discovering “a full fifth of fish known to man in his day,” Jordan had amassed an unparalleled collection of ichthyological specimens. Gathering up all the fish he could save, Jordan sewed the nameplates that had been on the destroyed jars directly onto the fish. His perseverance intrigued the author, who also discusses the struggles she underwent after her affair with a woman ended a heterosexual relationship. Born into an upstate New York farm family, Jordan attended Cornell and then became an itinerant scholar and field researcher until he landed at Indiana University, where his first ichthyological collection was destroyed by lightning. In between this catastrophe and others involving family members’ deaths, he reconstructed his collection. Later, he was appointed as the founding president of Stanford, where he evolved into a Machiavellian figure who trampled on colleagues and sang the praises of eugenics. Miller concludes that Jordan displayed the characteristics of someone who relied on “positive illusions” to rebound from disaster and that his stand on eugenics came from a belief in “a divine hierarchy from bacteria to humans that point[ed]…toward better.” Considering recent research that negates biological hierarchies, the author then suggests that Jordan’s beloved taxonomic category—fish—does not exist. Part biography, part science report, and part meditation on how the chaos that caused Miller’s existential misery could also bring self-acceptance and a loving wife, this unique book is an ingenious celebration of diversity and the mysterious order that underlies all existence.
A quirky wonder of a book.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5011-6027-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-17563-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
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