Graceful, psychologically astute portrait of the enigmatic author/scholar/explorer who was one of the first Christians to enter Mecca, discovered Africa's Lake Tanganyika, and translated such masterpieces as the Kama Sutra and The Arabian Nights. Published in England last year to commemorate the centenary of Burton's death, this biography marks a decided advance over McLynn's plodding Stanley (1990). While McLynn organizes the known facts of Burton's life with admirable economy and clarity, it is when he speculates on his subject's quirky—and frequently self-defeating, proto-fascist, and woman-hating—reactions to his milieux that he achieves some of his most telling effects. For example, McLynn discusses Burton's repressed homosexuality and persuasively argues that, as a young officer in India, Burton actually took part in the sexual activities he described in his report on male brothels in Karachi. Equally convincing is McLynn's theory that Burton's lifelong misogyny stemmed from his failure as a heterosexual lover during his army career. Among other well-rounded portraits here are those of John Hanning Speke, Burton's fellow explorer who was eventually designated the discoverer of the sources of the Nile, and of Isabel Arundell, the neurotic woman whom Burton married and who destroyed many of his most important documents after his death. The Arundell portrait very nearly walks off with the book, in fact, as McLynn captures the conflicting facets of her character—fawning wife, relentless promoter of her husband's reputation, religious zealot, social snob—in highly evocative detail. Excepting McLynn's fondness for arcane words and foreign phrases (``foetor,'' ``feculent,'' and ``canaille'' all appear in a single sentence)—a compelling and satisfying depiction of a man and an era, a worthy companion to Edward Rice's best-selling Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton (1990). (Eight pages of b&w illustrations, four maps.)
Pub Date: July 1, 1991
ISBN: 0-7195-4818-7
Page Count: 448
Publisher: John Murray Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1991
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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