by David Roberts ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 29, 2011
An e-book version of a coffee-table book.
Roberts, a Scottish artist of the 19th century, made his living and fame rendering sights in exotic locales as sketches and paintings that would be collected as lithographs in books. Much like the National Geographic of their day, his books gave readers a vicarious journey around the globe. This e-book presents a wealth of his Egyptian lithographs depicting mostly the sites of famous ruins—Luxor, Dendera, Karnak, Giza—as well as landscapes and cityscapes up and down the Nile, from Alexandria and into Nubia and Abyssinia. As thumbnails, some seem to be photographs, so exacting was Roberts’ technique. But this format enables readers to pinch and pull open the art to inspect the high-resolution scans in great detail. Doing so reveals the precision of the artist’s hand and his subtle and fine sense of color. The art is by far the most engaging element of the book. The text, based on letters and journal entries, is much less interesting (though well read by Simon Prebble). Those based on letters to his daughter have greater detail than the journal entries, many of which merely count the number of sketches undertaken that day. But even the letters remain mostly on the surface, categorizing movements of the day, sights seen, comforts and discomforts of the road, meals taken, plans for the next day—much like any ordinary tourist’s. Fittingly, Robert’s favorite adjective in his writings is “picturesque.” Best to let his art speak for him.
Pub Date: March 29, 2011
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Sideways Inc.
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2011
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by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
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.
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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by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006
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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