A hot dog memoir that ultimately isn’t juicy enough.
Riley details his ascent from a poor Southern farm boy to the head of one of the world’s most successful hot dog companies.
In his debut memoir, the author tells the story of his incredibly successful career, detailing the steps that led him to become the president of Hygrade Food Products, a world-renowned meat production company that created Ball Park Franks. Along the way, his marketing skills and business acumen help him tackle all manner of tricky situations, from strikes and union negotiations to a very scary incident involving a customer who claimed to have found a razor blade in a hot dog: “[W]e weren’t quite sure what we were dealing with….Had some lunatic tampered with a package at the supermarket?” He also touches on his family life, his love for his wife, Pat, and his sadness at her death after a long, happy marriage. Through it all, however, he remains modest: “I’m hardly the first or last person from a humble background—without financial resources, connections, or the advantage of a college diploma—to rise to the top of a company, industry, or profession.” Riley has had a remarkable life, including a childhood in a sharecropping family, and his long tenure at Hygrade certainly offers some momentous occasions. His voice is clear and strong, but also humble and self-deprecating. Unfortunately, too much of the memoir reads like rote recitation of past events, with too many long-winded descriptions of business technicalities for lay readers to remain entertained. Although Riley discusses several people who were important to him, they tend to blend together, and readers may have difficulty remembering who’s who. Some of the strongest sections are when Riley contributes analysis; for instance, he muses that, as a child in the South, he “lived in a strictly circumscribed world, the opposite of what today would be known as ‘diverse’….The ethnic mix around me changed abruptly once I arrived in Detroit in the 1960s.” This statement opens up some fascinating questions that remain frustratingly unexplored: How did he feel about the change in his circumstances? What was the city really like? More nuance might have made the story more engaging.
A hot dog memoir that ultimately isn’t juicy enough.Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2014
ISBN: 978-1499042504
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Xlibris
Review Posted Online: Oct. 9, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
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
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