A fast-paced, gossipy rundown on the House of Gallo, whose octogenarian patriarchs helped make wine a mass-market commodity in the US while concealing a past replete with personal and business scandal. Although Ernest and Julio remain the most familiar Gallos, they have a younger brother, Joseph, Jr., who has no stake in the family firm. When the two elders, who built the immensely profitable E & J Gallo Winery, sued Joseph during the mid-1980's to prevent him from putting his own name on the cheese he made for sale, they opened a Pandora's box. Drawing on the vast troves of documentary material released by the protracted litigation, and on his access to many Gallo principals, relatives, and ex-employees, Hawkes (Feminism on Trial, 1986) offers a revelatory, generation- spanning chronicle. In addition to piercing the corporate veil, the author discloses that Joseph, Sr., an Italian immigrant who became a successful grape grower in northern California, murdered his wife and then killed himself in 1933. His estate gave Ernest and Julio the means to get into the wine business in a big way—with an unacknowledged assist from a bootlegging uncle. Hawkes leaves little doubt that the ruthlessly autocratic Ernest euchred a trusting Joseph, Jr., out of a potentially sizable legacy. Moreover, she points out, for all its oenological pretensions, Gallo's most profitable products are so-called street wines (Thunderbird, Night Train Express, Gypsy Rose). Covered as well are: the strong-arm tactics used to gain distribution for Gallo wares; frequent run-ins with federal authorities; the peace of mind attained by Joseph, Jr., despite primal betrayals; and a host of familial fancies long accepted as facts. While Hawkes gives Joseph, Jr., the benefit of almost every doubt, she provides a slick reckoning on the Gallos, a would-be dynasty that, by her account, may be nearing the end of the line. (Eight pages of b&w photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: March 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-671-64986-8
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1993
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
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
