German Philosophers in Love, from humanities professor Ettinger (MIT; Rosa Luxemburg, A Life, 1987, etc.). When Hannah Arendt was a sultry 18-year-old studying philosophy at the University of Marburg, she fell in love with Martin Heidegger, the soon-to-be-Nazi, who more or less obligingly fell in love with his Jewish student. He was in his mid-30s, married with two sons, and well known as the philosopher of Being. The steamy part of their affair lasted from 1924 until 1930 or so. She was soon in exile, and by 1933 he was a member of the Nazi Party, perhaps more out of the worst sort of opportunism than genuine ideological commitment. After the war Arendt knew something of Heidegger's craven behavior among the Nazis, including various acts of anti-Semitism within the university. Though angry at first, she was only too willing to believe his claims that he was the victim of slander and Nazi persecution. She soon warmed up to him again; remaining strangely blind to his brazen manipulation of her, she corresponded with him and visited him in Germany. Ettinger writes: ``The letters Heidegger wrote following Arendt's visits were warm, elegant, romantic, even seductive. He would recall her becoming dress, ask for her photographs, compose poems for her, remember a symphony by Beethoven they both enjoyed, describe the magic of nature, hark back to the long-ago past.'' But the reader, appetite made keen by such enticing descriptions, will want to know exactly what he said. Alas, Ettinger is stingy with quotations in general and especially miserly when it comes to the unpublished correspondence. Perhaps there are restrictions on it; she does not say. Still, the ballad of Hannah and Martin is fascinating, revealing sides of these remarkable personalities that until now have been hidden. And at a time when Arendt is finding new readers, Ettinger's little book will probably generate a new round of Arendt-bashing among old enemies.
Pub Date: Sept. 20, 1995
ISBN: 0-300-06407-1
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1995
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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