by Eric Lax ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 6, 2010
A well-written autobiography, artfully folding in another’s story, and alternate course, along with the author’s own.
One man’s slow drift away from the faith of his father.
Looking back on his younger years, biographer Lax (Conversations with Woody Allen, 2007, etc.) provides an intriguing coming-of-age story set against the backdrop of the Vietnam era. The son of an Episcopal priest, religion played an important role in much of the author’s life, but it is not always at the center of this autobiography. Lax begins with his childhood as the son of two models of Christian piety. Through his parents the author learned about integrity and loving his neighbor, and it was because of their good example that he accepted the Christian faith without question. He entered Hobart College in 1962 and things began to change: “The Book of Common Prayer, where I had been content to find my answers, was suddenly a slim volume indeed.” After Hobart, Lax was faced with the formidable quandary of his day, Vietnam and the draft. He struggled with the decision of whether or not to declare himself a conscientious objector, and whether his growing pacifist beliefs were indeed genuine or self-serving. To avoid both the draft and the conscientious-objector question for a time, he enrolled in the Peace Corps. Assigned to the Truk Islands in Micronesia, Lax spent two years on a tiny island of 185 inhabitants. This tale alone provides a fascinating core for the book, but Lax also juxtaposes his experiences with those of a close friend who enrolled as an Army officer in Vietnam. His friend returned from an intense and horrifying war experience and entered seminary, while Lax came back from the Peace Corps and eventually applied for conscientious-objector status. As his friend became a priest and then a bishop, Lax’s faith slowly receded, and the book comes to a melancholy end with the death of his parents.
A well-written autobiography, artfully folding in another’s story, and alternate course, along with the author’s own.Pub Date: April 6, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-307-27091-7
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2010
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by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
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
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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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