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A DISTANT HEARTBEAT

Name: A DISTANT HEARTBEAT
Author: Eunice Lipton
ISBN: 978-0-8263-5658-1

A WAR, A DISAPPEARANCE, AND A FAMILY'S SECRETS

by Eunice Lipton ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 2016

Flawed but well-researched and often stirring.

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An art historian’s account of the research she undertook to understand the life of a mysterious uncle.

Lipton (French Seduction: An American's Encounter with France, Her Father, and the Holocaust, 2007, etc.) had always known that her father, Louis, had singled her out as his favorite and the one who would bear the memories of his younger brother, Dave. “He baited my curiosity,” she writes, with stories of an elusive young man whose life “could have gone almost anywhere” but who decided to dedicate himself to leftist politics and a conflict—the Spanish Civil War—that eventually killed him. The impulse to know her uncle, however, did not emerge until she was well into adulthood. As she questioned the father from whom she found herself periodically estranged, she was confronted with Louis’ inexplicable rage over letters that Dave had sent home from Spain. Determined to discover the truth about her uncle’s life and her father’s family, Lipton began to research the part he played in the war at museums and veterans’ societies in New York and Boston. Her work eventually unearthed the names of fellow soldiers who knew Dave and attested to his “gentleness and commitment…[and] mildness of manner.” She also learned about the expatriates like her uncle who chose to fight for Spain: passion drove them, but so did a burning desire to “[b]ecome part of something” greater than themselves. Their stories and testimonials allowed Lipton to imagine her uncle, his world, and her father and eventually uncover a bitter family truth. Louis—a man who had “made money…[and] forgot [his] idealism”—had been jealous enough of Dave to want to make their parents believe that their beloved youngest child never loved them enough to write from Spain. That Lipton never elaborates on the complications that arose between herself and her father lessens the emotional impact of the book, but the abiding love she reveals for the uncle she never met is heartfelt.

Flawed but well-researched and often stirring.

Pub Date: April 1, 2016

ISBN: 978-0-8263-5658-1

Page Count: 176

Publisher: Univ. of New Mexico

Review Posted Online: Jan. 25, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2016

Categories:

- BOOK REVIEW
FRENCH SEDUCTION
by Eunice Lipton

- BOOK REVIEW
ALIAS OLYMPIA
by Eunice Lipton

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

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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

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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INTO THE WILD

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...

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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.

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor will it to readers of Krakauer's narrative. (4 maps) (First printing of 35,000; author tour)