A grounded and consistently absorbing biography.
A dual biography of entertainment legends Elizabeth Taylor and Michael Jackson that explores their individual careers and personal lives leading up to and including their 25-year friendship.
There was no end to the media coverage shadowing Taylor and Jackson throughout much of their lives. In this exhaustively researched new book, Bogle (Heat Wave: The Life and Career of Ethel Waters, 2011, etc.) revisits some of the familiar details but with a fresh and fair-minded perspective. His intent is not to expose startling new facts or dish on the more lurid rumors but rather to provide some clarity regarding their more vulnerable human qualities. The author devotes the first two-thirds of the book to their individual stories leading up to their first encounter. Through alternating chapters, he traces how both had achieved fame, along with the associated consequences, at very early stages in their lives; each was to remain in the increasingly bright though frequently harsh spotlight for the rest of their lives, as masters and victims of their stardom. Taylor attracted attention onscreen through memorable performances in such films as A Place in the Sun (1951) and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) and off-screen through her numerous marriages and love affairs, along with multiple ailments and life-threatening illnesses. She later found her most satisfying work through her efforts promoting AIDS awareness and research as co-founder of the American Foundation for AIDS Research. Jackson experienced immediate fame as lead singer of the Jackson 5 and later achieved record-breaking triumphs as a solo artist with his many hit albums. Yet controversy stalked him throughout his later career with reports of child molestation, drug use, and threats of financial ruin. Their meeting in 1984 would prove a highpoint for each, quickly establishing a mutual devotion that would serve to nourish their lives throughout their remaining years. Devoted fans of either star may be familiar with much of this material, but they will appreciate the balance and compassion underscoring Bogle’s treatment.
A grounded and consistently absorbing biography.Pub Date: Aug. 30, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4516-7697-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
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
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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