An edifying portrayal of an indefatigably purposeful life.
A debut biography focuses on an Italian-American entrepreneur who essentially invented modern banking.
Valente’s book examines the life of Amadeo Pietro Giannini, who was born in 1870 in California. He was the son of Italian immigrants who came to the United States in 1869 in search of opportunity. When he was only 6 years old, he witnessed his father’s murder—he was shot to death by one of his workers over a wage dispute—a traumatic experience that taught the boy an early lesson about the gossamer vulnerability of life. His mother married Lorenzo Scatena, an Italian entrepreneur who owned a thriving produce company and who would become a mentor to Giannini. The boy displayed a precocious talent for business and an insatiable ambition. At 14, he dropped out of school to work for L. Scatena & Co. full time. He pioneered the purchase of produce on consignment and, by the end of 1885, was the company’s chief salesman; at 21, he was a full partner. In 1892, he married Clorinda Agnes Cuneo, the daughter of a wealthy real estate tycoon. When Giannini’s father-in-law died, he became the executor of his will, which included shares in and a directorship of Columbus Savings and Loan. Giannini had a vision for the bank’s egalitarian transformation—he wanted to shift its focus to accepting deposits from and dispensing loans to less affluent Italian-Americans, a plan considered so radical he eventually resigned from the board. He started his own bank—the Bank of Italy—which later became part of holdings that included Bank of America. Giannini’s banking empire revolutionized the industry by turning it toward the establishment of local branches under centralized supervision. Valente, writing in crystal clear prose, concisely captures not only Giannini’s entrepreneurial boldness, but also his abiding commitment to social reform and civic causes. After the disastrous San Francisco earthquake in 1906, “he helped the city rise from the ashes by making loans ‘on a face and a signature’ to the small businesses and people whose lives were shattered.” Part of the Barbera Foundation’s Mentoris Project, devoted to biographies of historically significant Italians and Italian-Americans, Valente’s study is scrupulously researched, both informative and inspiring. She also furnishes a vivid portrait not only of the corruption of turn-of-the-century San Francisco, but also the inhospitality Italian immigrants routinely encountered in the United States.
An edifying portrayal of an indefatigably purposeful life.Pub Date: Jan. 11, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-947431-04-1
Page Count: 218
Publisher: Barbera Foundation, Inc.
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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