bookshelf

THE NATURE OF SACRIFICE

Name: THE NATURE OF SACRIFICE
Author: Carol Bundy
ISBN: 0-374-12077-3

A BIOGRAPHY OF CHARLES RUSSELL LOWELL, JR.

by Carol Bundy ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2005

Sometimes excessive in her praise of Lowell, the author nonetheless has crafted an enduring and often lovely monument to his...

bookshelf

A stunning biography of a young man from one of American’s most celebrated families who quickly rose to the rank of colonel in the Union cavalry and died, at age 29, from wounds suffered in a charge at Cedar Creek.

At the funeral of Charles Russell Lowell (1835–64), nephew of poet James Russell Lowell, were some of the greatest names in American letters: Longfellow, Emerson, Holmes (the cast of The Dante Club!). Hawthorne would have been there, too, had he not died himself a few months earlier. Bundy has examined an abundance of evidence in her reconstruction of the life of this most remarkable fellow—family letters and diaries, published histories of the Civil War (and of its individual encounters), biographies of key figures in the story. She begins with Lowell’s death, then retreats to examine his ancestry (on numerous branches of the family tree, a copy of which would have been helpful), and then relates the short, mostly happy life of her principal. Lowell did well in school (winning top honors at both Boston Latin and Harvard) but then, like many other young men, spun his wheels before finding traction in his military career. Before the Civil War, he worked for a merchant, tried the iron business, got involved in a grain deal. Then, in the mid-1850s, he showed signs of tuberculosis. Fortunately, however, the disease went into partial remission, enabling him to live a very active life—including a lengthy tour of the Continent (he visited Italian museums with Hawthorne) and a successful stint in the railroad business in Iowa. Once the Civil War began, Lowell and many of his Harvard coevals enlisted to fight (most would be wounded or killed), and he discovered his talents for leadership. His cavalry unit chased the notorious Mosby, won some impressive encounters, earned the respect of the military brass. When Lowell died, Custer wept.

Sometimes excessive in her praise of Lowell, the author nonetheless has crafted an enduring and often lovely monument to his memory. (80 b&w illustrations; 1 map, not seen)

Pub Date: March 1, 2005

ISBN: 0-374-12077-3

Page Count: 688

Publisher: Hill and Wang/Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2005

Categories:

bookshelf

THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

bookshelf

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

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

bookshelf

INTO THE WILD

by Jon Krakauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1996

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...

bookshelf

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.

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor will it to readers of Krakauer's narrative. (4 maps) (First printing of 35,000; author tour)