A lavish, capably rendered family biography that will speak to anyone who appreciates passionate artists and dealmakers.
A scion of the Cartier family delivers a rich history of their jewelry dynasty.
World-renowned for its iconic gems and designs, which have included the Hope Diamond, the Tank watch, and the panther bracelet, the Cartier brand is synonymous with innovative taste. Brickell details the company's creation by Louis-François Cartier in Paris in 1847; its growth under his son, Alfred; its 20th-century expansion to London and New York under the helm of Alfred’s sons, Louis, Pierre, and Jacques, whose gifts vaulted the company into an establishment that royals and America’s nouveau riche titans appreciated; and the sale of each branch when the heirs parted ways in the 1960s and ’70s. The author’s elegant writing and a talent for braiding the main narrative with quotes from the brothers’ letters enliven a bygone period in which craftsmanship and exclusivity went hand in hand. Brickell covers strategic moves that reveal the family’s savvy and strings colorful anecdotes throughout the wider story of one of the French luxury industry's key players. Sections on Louis, whose aptitude for talent scouting and taste stood out, capture the excitement of designing influential collections. From heiresses and exiled Russian nobility to maharajas and Hollywood stars, each client was treated with discretion. The chapters set in the 1920s portray a memorable glamour, and comments from Brickell's grandfather add a warm immediacy. Jacques' excursions to India highlight his skill in cultivating connections as well as the advantages the family had in boasting three dedicated brothers who could be in different places at the same time while representing the brand. Furthermore, the resilience during the world wars shows the family’s love of their homeland. In later chapters, the author depicts the company's structural changes after the brothers' deaths with cleareyed compassion and without assigning blame. Despite occasional disagreements, Louis, Pierre, and Jacques cooperated to create a saga of remarkable faith in each other and their motto: "Never copy, only create."
A lavish, capably rendered family biography that will speak to anyone who appreciates passionate artists and dealmakers.Pub Date: Nov. 26, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-525-62161-4
Page Count: 688
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Sept. 10, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2019
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
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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