Initially written (but never published) in the 1930s, this biography of notorious gangster John Dillinger has the authentic flavor of the era, bolstered by its coauthor's firsthand contact with some of the leading players. Girardin penned his manuscript not long after Dillinger was shot dead by the FBI at the Biograph Theatre on North Lincoln Avenue in Chicago on July 22, 1934. An advertising man, he had had a chance meeting with Dillinger's dubious lawyer, one Louis Piquett, and had been prompted to follow the outlaw's story. In 1990, just before he died, he collaborated with William Helmer (The Gun That Made the Twenties Roar, 1969) to produce the present text. Dillinger was the most charismatic and charming of the '20s-era gangsters, with none of the cold-blooded ruthlessness of Al Capone or Baby Face Nelson. The centerpiece of the book is an account of Dillinger's first and most spectacular jailbreak, from a small prison in Arizona, with a wooden gun smuggled in by one of his associates (Piquett himself was suspected). The escape was a national sensation, and Piquett, who had a sharp eye for any opportunity, became the ``most famous lawyer in America'' (in his own words). The authors shed interesting light on crime detection in the US and its relative backwardness as late as the 1920s. Before the emergence of the FBI, the looseness of national policing made it relatively easy for outlaws to roam the country; the creation of this agency in essentially its contemporary form was precisely what stopped Dillinger in his tracks. As Hoover said, the outlaw had two major weaknesses: sex and ``a flair for the spectacular.'' He was betrayed by a woman who was linked to one of his police killers, and he did indeed die spectacularly. Thousands of people filed past the Biograph Theatre to dip handkerchiefs in his blood. Eminently revealing and enjoyable.
Pub Date: May 31, 1994
ISBN: 0-253-32556-0
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Indiana Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1994
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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