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SPOOK

TALES OF A BIRD DOG

A charming paean to the sport of bird hunting by one of the elder statesmen of the wing-shooting press. Approaching 80, Henderson began hunting and writing about it 40 years ago, and his articles still run in magazines like Gun Dot and Pointing Dog Journal. The retired lawyer and former state legislator counters the popular image of beer-swilling, potbellied louts running amok in the field. He and his North Carolina companions are of the old school of southern quail hunters, by his own accounting a ``stubborn, opinionated, backward-looking, anachronistic'' lot (which, of course, is a matter of some pride among them). But first and foremost they are gentlemen, conservators of both nature and the hunting tradition. For these traditionalists, only two breeds of bird dogs (English setters and English pointers) will do and only one birdthe bobwhite quailis worth hunting. Outside of that, the formula is simple, if old- fashioned: ``A recipe for birdhunting requires four ingredients. They are birds, dogs, guns, and guys.'' Henderson plumbs the mystery and aesthetics of the hunting experience with the knowledgeable, poetic eye of a passionate outdoorsman, recounting a lifetime of dogs, hunting buddies, covey rises, missed shots, and other misadventures with a courtly, avuncular affability that gives these loosely organized tales and observations the agreeable tenor of a fireside chat (accompanied by Shep Foley's line drawings). Though mostly a collection of odds and ends, Henderson's remembrances express a fundamental moral code that demands respect for land, people, and animals. Of particular note is the relationship between hunters and their dogsa special bond of love, discipline, and shared adventure that Henderson limns with great affection and honesty as he memorializes Spook and other canine companions. A treasurethe next best thing to a day afield for longtime hunters or newcomers to the sport.

Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1995

ISBN: 1-55821-402-X

Page Count: 128

Publisher: Lyons Press

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1995

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NIGHT

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...

Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children. 

He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions. 

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.

Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006

ISBN: 0374500010

Page Count: 120

Publisher: Hill & Wang

Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006

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INTO THE WILD

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...

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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.

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor will it to readers of Krakauer's narrative. (4 maps) (First printing of 35,000; author tour)

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

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