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BEEN THERE, DONE THAT

AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY

The teen idol, singer, former husband of Elizabeth Taylor, Debbie Reynolds, and Connie Stevens, father of actresses Carrie and Joely Fisher, pens a tell-all memoir with the help of celebrity profiler David Fisher (no relation and co-author with George Burns of All My Best Friends, 1989, among others). Fisher is quick to point out his many successes, saying on the second page, “I had more consecutive hit records than the Beatles or Elvis Presley, Ike loved me, Jack Kennedy and I shared drugs and women, and [my voice] transformed me from a shy little boy into a man who attracted the most famous and desirable women in the world.” That sets the tone for the rest of the book, as he goes on to name-drop brazenly, particularly about his numerous romantic conquests. In addition to writing about Reynolds (“A self-centered, totally driven, insecure, untruthful phony”), Taylor (“Among them all she stood alone—), and Stevens, he discusses affairs with Marlene Dietrich (“To have been seduced by Marlene Dietrich is to have been taught how to make love by the expert”), Mamie Van Doren, Dinah Shore, Kim Novak, Juliet Prowse (“granted” to him, he claims, by Frank Sinatra), and Ann-Margret. He also opens up about mobster Sam Giancana, Marilyn Monroe, producer Mike Todd, Audrey Hepburn, Richard Burton, and practically everyone else in Hollywood during that era. Underneath all that bravado, however, is a surprising amount of remorse, particularly for the money he wasted and his 30-year battle with drug addiction. At no point is his regret stronger and more poignantly recounted than when he discusses his kids. “I was their father only biologically,” he admits. Though all of Fisher’s misfortunes were self-inflicted, he does become a sympathetic protagonist when writing about his children with love and pride. An aptly titled tale of a lecherous, often narcissistic, star run amok—yet by the end readers will end up rooting for, and even liking, Eddie Fisher. Now that’s talent.

Pub Date: Sept. 14, 1999

ISBN: 0-312-20972-X

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1999

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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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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

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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