For students of military history and tactics, this is a modest addition to the huge library devoted to Napoleon. But for...
The Little Corporal goes love-happy and receives little but scorn for his troubles.
Napoleon had plenty of excuses for not having been a dynamo in the boudoir: after all, he had a world to conquer, and affairs of state took precedence over affairs of the heart. Even so, he found plenty of time to chase women, some of whom left distinctly unflattering accounts of his performance and endowments—accounts that have found their way into the Napoleonic folklore and given rise to some scurrilous slanders and deliciously unprintable limericks. Hibbert, distinguished biographer of Europe’s royals and nobles (Wellington: A Personal History, 1997, etc.), writes sympathetically of his subject while acknowledging the justice of some of those complaints. He writes that even Napoleon himself remarked, “I don’t like women very much. . . . I take them and forget them,” and, as one of his contemporaries reported, “He seldom said anything agreeable to women . . . and frequently made the rudest and most extraordinary remarks. To one he would say, ‘Good heavens, how red your arms are,’ or to another, ‘What an ugly hat!’ Or he might say, ‘Your dress is rather dirty. Don’t you ever change your clothes?’ ” Yet women, Hibbert writes, played an important role in Napoleon’s life, from his mother, who did much to form his imperious and quick-tempered character, to his “little Creole” Josephine, whom he divorced because she could not bear him an heir but whom he loved as no other, from the prostitute who initiated him as a young officer to the wives of the English and French officers who kept an eye on him while imprisoned on St. Helena. Napoleon emerges in Hibbert’s account as a tightly wrapped bundle of neuroses, capable of a strange tenderness and of outrageously bad manners—all of which allows us to see Napoleon as a flawed and wounded human, an aspect little encountered elsewhere.
For students of military history and tactics, this is a modest addition to the huge library devoted to Napoleon. But for general readers, it’s a pleasure, full of well-chosen information and juicy anecdotes.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-393-05202-8
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2002
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
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
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