A lively but incomplete biography of Admiral Nelson that keeps most strategy below decks and instead concentrates on one of the more celebrated adulteries in history. In doing so, the prolific Hibbert (Cavaliers and Roundheads, 1993, etc.) taps a vein of popular curiosity about Nelson, but deals with that part of Nelson's character that is least interesting. For the truth is that Nelson, aside from his profession, was not a very interesting man. Having left school at 12 to become a midshipman in the Navy, he was vain, sanctimonious about his dedication to duty, hypochondriacal, and often querulous about the inadequacy of the rewards that he received. To the dismay of his admirers who thought her a poseur, he was unable to see through Emma Hamilton, the mistress and then wife of Sir William Hamilton, the minister in Naples, who had taken her over from his nephew and in turn, knowingly or otherwise, shared her with Nelson. This mÇnage Ö trois scandalized Europe and leaves historians, including Hibbert, uncertain as to whether Sir William was aware that his wife had given birth to Nelson's child and whether he truly believed his oft-asserted statement of the purity of their relationship. What is really interesting about Nelson, and what historians, including Hibbert, find difficult to communicate, is the fascination that he roused in his peers: ``I don't know that I ever had a conversation that interested me more,'' wrote the very unimpressionable Duke of Wellington after an interview in which he had initially seen Nelson at his vainglorious worst. Hibbert gives us insight into the human touch that made Nelson beloved by his men but little on the strategic grasp that associated him with the four most devastating defeats suffered by the French Navy and its allies in the Napoleonic Wars. It is almost impossible for Hibbert to write a dull sentence- -King Ferdinand of Naples, he writes, was ``a fundamentally idle man much given to fornication''—and he gives a fine sense of Nelson the man. To understand what made Nelson different from his contemporaries, one will have to read elsewhere.
Pub Date: Dec. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-201-62457-5
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Addison-Wesley
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1994
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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