An enjoyable but less-than-objective biography of “one of the most prominent Catholics in the world.”
Biography of the current cardinal from New York.
Journalist Boyle presents a lighthearted, highly positive portrait of Cardinal Timothy Dolan. As a comparably young cardinal whose influence in the Catholic Church has been steadily on the rise for years, Dolan is a good candidate for biographical study. Boyle’s attempt, however, is often too saccharine. She shows him emerging from a stereotypical 1950s suburban household in Missouri, complete with pious parents always willing to sacrifice for their family. The young Dolan attended a new and growing Catholic elementary school and knew from an early age that he wanted to be a priest. After taking a predetermined track through high school and seminary toward that purpose, he was awarded the rare honor of studying at the Pontifical North American College in Rome. From that point on, his rise was nearly meteoric. Boyle’s most substantive chapters concern Dolan’s years as a bishop in St. Louis and as archbishop of Milwaukee, during the height of the child sexual abuse scandals in those cities. Since 2009, Dolan has led the church in New York as archbishop and now as cardinal. Boyle has crafted an approachable and readable book and lays a foundation for those hoping to learn more about this influential church leader. However, her work reads like a commissioned biography far more than a journalistic effort. The book is replete with folksy examples of Dolan’s humor, compassion and wisdom, as well as countless doting quotes from those who have known him. Only occasionally does Boyle offer criticism, and the author herself often effuses praise—e.g., “[Dolan’s] joie de vivre was matched only by his piety.”
An enjoyable but less-than-objective biography of “one of the most prominent Catholics in the world.”Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-250-03287-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Aug. 25, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2014
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
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.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
SEEN & HEARD
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.
Rootin’-tootin’ history of the dry-gulchers, horn-swogglers, and outright killers who populated the Wild West’s wildest city in the late 19th century.
The stories of Wyatt Earp and company, the shootout at the O.K. Corral, and Geronimo and the Apache Wars are all well known. Clavin, who has written books on Dodge City and Wild Bill Hickok, delivers a solid narrative that usefully links significant events—making allies of white enemies, for instance, in facing down the Apache threat, rustling from Mexico, and other ethnically charged circumstances. The author is a touch revisionist, in the modern fashion, in noting that the Earps and Clantons weren’t as bloodthirsty as popular culture has made them out to be. For example, Wyatt and Bat Masterson “took the ‘peace’ in peace officer literally and knew that the way to tame the notorious town was not to outkill the bad guys but to intimidate them, sometimes with the help of a gun barrel to the skull.” Indeed, while some of the Clantons and some of the Earps died violently, most—Wyatt, Bat, Doc Holliday—died of cancer and other ailments, if only a few of old age. Clavin complicates the story by reminding readers that the Earps weren’t really the law in Tombstone and sometimes fell on the other side of the line and that the ordinary citizens of Tombstone and other famed Western venues valued order and peace and weren’t particularly keen on gunfighters and their mischief. Still, updating the old notion that the Earp myth is the American Iliad, the author is at his best when he delineates those fraught spasms of violence. “It is never a good sign for law-abiding citizens,” he writes at one high point, “to see Johnny Ringo rush into town, both him and his horse all in a lather.” Indeed not, even if Ringo wound up killing himself and law-abiding Tombstone faded into obscurity when the silver played out.
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21458-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
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