by Edwin R. Sweeney ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 1991
The surprisingly dreary product of 15 years of painstaking research, Sweeney's first book is a flat biography of the legendary Apache chief. Cochise was undoubtedly one of the greatest warrior chiefs in Native American history, fierce in battle and a capable leader, and, as Sweeney notes, no book-length biography of this dynamo exists—making the inadequacies of Sweeney's account all the more unfortunate. The son of a chief, Cochise grew to maturity in the then-Mexican-ruled Southwest during a period of relative tranquillity. Each breach of the peace brought a swift response, however, and rapid spirals of retaliation and revenge hampered any prospects of a lasting cease-fire. The increasing Anglo-American presence over the years, with its own territorial claims, gave the Apaches even more reason to fight to retain their way of life. A particularly misguided effort by the US Army in 1861 to recover a captive white boy by taking Apache hostages, Cochise and his brother among them, ended in bloodshed and executions on both sides, and Cochise's War was on in earnest. For nearly a decade, Cochise terrorized Americans and Mexicans in the region with assaults and ambushes, showing consummate skill as a strategist, until finally hounded into accepting a truce and reservation life in the early 1870's. He died soon after, an old man at peace, even though his struggle was taken up subsequently by Geronimo and others. Extensive notes and full use of sources readily indicate Sweeney's depth of research, but a frequent repetition of basic facts and lack of editorial judgment compromise any sense of scholarly achievement. History becomes a record of troop movements and body counts, creating the dullest of chronologies, while hazy conjecture about Cochise's undocumented activities proves a slippery supplement to more concrete information. Lackluster and grindingly detailed, albeit sympathetic toward its subject.
Pub Date: May 1, 1991
ISBN: 0-8061-2337-0
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Univ. of Oklahoma
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1991
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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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by Jon Krakauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1996
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
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