More likely to make readers petition for a continental name change than sing Vespucci’s praises.
Far from being the innovative navigational genius of legend, Vespucci emerges here as salesman extraordinaire.
Although Fernández-Armesto (History/Tufts; Pathfinders: A Global History of Exploration, 2006, etc.) gallantly attempts to make him appear otherwise, Amerigo Vespucci is the historical equivalent of a great trailer for a lame movie. In summation, he’s an undeniably compelling figure, as evidenced by the book’s opening salvo: “Amerigo Vespucci…was a pimp in his youth and a magus in his maturity.” It’s hard not to be intrigued by a man who was on intimate terms with both Columbus and the Medici family, a man who enjoyed an almost mystical reputation as a navigator. Readers will quickly find, however, that broad descriptions of his exploits are far more compelling than the actual events of his life. Vespucci is a shadowy figure; he left behind little original writing, and a number of works attributed to him are of dubious authenticity. He was also a mercenary hack who sold his services to the highest bidder—though, to be fair, this was no egregious offense at the time. Unlike Columbus, from whom he drew heavily in his descriptions of his voyages and the lands he encountered, Vespucci was a passive traveler, not the commander of an expedition. He claimed expertise with a variety of instruments, but in actuality the showy, authoritative manner he employed when flourishing them in front of bewildered seamen was inversely proportional to his ability to use them correctly. The mapmaker who named South America in Vespucci’s honor later regretted that decision and sought to rechristen it “Terra Incognita”; by then, however, historical inertia had taken hold.
More likely to make readers petition for a continental name change than sing Vespucci’s praises.Pub Date: Aug. 14, 2007
ISBN: 978-1-4000-6281-2
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2007
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
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
SEEN & HEARD
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