edited by Charles C. Cox, III ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 25, 2016
A glimpse into the past that is more intriguing for the details of the period that it reveals than for the narrative it...
The past is brought to life in this reproduction of an early 20th-century travel journal.
Cox (Immigrant Pathways in and near Fox Hill—Fox Point: A Journey through History, 2016) presents the edited journal of Ruth Kent, who went on a “Grand Tour” of Europe with her sister and parents in 1902, following her graduation from Smith College. Kent traveled from New England to Germany, and also ventured into neighboring areas such as Switzerland and the Netherlands. She recounts her many experiences as she and her family explored Europe in a variety of fashions, including horse and carriage, train, boat, and an early-edition automobile. Kent’s writing focuses on both the large and small facts of her trips. She describes everything from the breathtaking architecture of cathedrals and castles to the mundane details of her days, such as the meals she ate and the foibles of their breakdown-prone car. Kent and her family met many other travelers on their journey, including a Spanish countess, English aristocrats, and even other young women from Kent’s school in New England on Grand Tours of their own. The diary delivers a look at life at the turn of the 20th century, and in particular a popular vacation trend from that era. Reading Kent’s words reveals a snapshot of economic privilege, Victorian-influenced social norms, and a landscape that would become the hotbed of World War I roughly a decade later. The color photographs that accompany the journal, while occasionally out of focus, provide context for Kent’s adventures and help the reader understand the various locations that she describes. But the journal’s biggest strength is also its occasional weakness—the ordinariness of her encounters. While it can be engrossing from a historical perspective to examine the minutiae of Kent’s days (down to the dishes used to serve afternoon tea), readers wanting a tale of thrilling escapades or eventful treks will likely be disappointed. Although Kent keeps a fairly precise account of her travels, very little occurs that is remarkable.
A glimpse into the past that is more intriguing for the details of the period that it reveals than for the narrative it presents.Pub Date: July 25, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5305-1262-1
Page Count: 156
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Ludwig Bemelmans ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 23, 1955
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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developed by Ludwig Bemelmans ; illustrated by Steven Salerno
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by Charlayne Hunter-Gault ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 1992
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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