A sometimes enlightening book that will likely intrigue and amuse many readers, while perhaps leaving them with more...
Random observations of life and the world, written in a curiously engaging style.
Janabi, a blogger and adventurous world traveler, offers “a basic framework of today’s irrational world,” and he’s clearly unafraid to tackle many of humanity’s most challenging subjects. In this sweeping, five-part volume, he covers science, philosophy, politics, economics and technology. His entries about the story of the universe, the exploration of space and the question of God’s existence may cover little that hasn’t been written about before, and some readers may find the philosophy section somewhat ponderous. But when he rails against politics and prognosticates about the future, Janabi is often on target, insightful and even eloquent. About politicians, he writes, “We are so caught up in the hype of politics every few years—the media blitz, the promises, the demagoguery, and the activism—that we continually forget to ask the question: Why is a politician so relevant in the modern world?” Regarding the world’s future food supply, the author predicts: “Very soon, we will be able to economically grow any type of food locally, using climate-controlled, 24/7 underground/indoor farms and save all that energy we currently use shipping exotic foods from one side of the planet to the other, on more productive pursuits.” He can be righteously indignant, as when he discusses the U.S. government’s ineffectiveness in declaring certain drugs illegal: “The problem is not in whether drugs are illegal or not, but in how they are managed.…It is mind-bogglingly stupid—not to mention unethical—that people are not allowed to do whatever they want to their own bodies.” Indeed, it’s the author’s very indignation that, in part, makes this an engaging read. However, in order to get the most from this encompassing work, readers may need to overlook Janabi’s numerous digressions and his apparent tendency to write more for his own enjoyment than for his audience’s. That said, the author’s prose has a distinct edge throughout.
A sometimes enlightening book that will likely intrigue and amuse many readers, while perhaps leaving them with more questions than answers.Pub Date: March 30, 2013
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 197
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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