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