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YOUNG AND DAMNED AND FAIR

Name: YOUNG AND DAMNED AND FAIR
Author: Gareth Russell
ISBN: 978-1-5011-0863-1

THE LIFE OF CATHERINE HOWARD, FIFTH WIFE OF KING HENRY VIII

by Gareth Russell ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 4, 2017

Dense with material and flavor of the epoch.

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An intimate biography of Henry VIII’s fifth queen: vivacious young woman who only wanted to have fun or a tragic victim of abusive elders?

In his largely sympathetic portrait of Catherine Howard (1523-1542), whose youthful flirtations spelled her downfall, Irish playwright and historian Russell (The Emperors: How Europe's Rulers Were Destroyed by the First World War, 2014, etc.) renders a fully fleshed portrait of Howard based around the details of her household and intimates. Indeed, the author’s study is so intricately woven in contextual detail that he often fails to see the forest for the trees—e.g., what were Catherine’s true motivations; was she just a flimsy bystander to her own fate? Her pampered upbringing as a noblewoman (granddaughter to Thomas Howard, the 2nd Duke of Norfolk) and sense of natural entitlement did not shield her from her father’s habitual indebtedness, and she received little in the way of formal education. Catherine was a ward of her rich aunt Agnes, the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk, and her teenage years were dotted with infatuations—e.g., with her music teacher, Henry Manox, and her aunt’s secretary, Francis Dereham. Russell sifts carefully through the evidence and dismisses the explanation of sexual abuse, as clearly Catherine was in love, especially with Dereham and later, as queen, with Thomas Culpeper, a handsome favorite of her husband. Her 16-month stint as queen revealed “the Henrician court in its twilight, a glittering but pernicious sunset,” when Henry had just divorced Anne of Cleves because he disliked her and impulsively married the charming Catherine on the day Thomas Cromwell was executed, July 28, 1540. Perhaps the marriage was engineered by her uncle Norfolk, who had grown jealous and suspicious of the former Protestant chief minister. Russell’s portrait effectively underscores the machinations of this volatile court, the treachery of sycophants, and the importance of the all-seeing servants.

Dense with material and flavor of the epoch.

Pub Date: April 4, 2017

ISBN: 978-1-5011-0863-1

Page Count: 464

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: Jan. 23, 2017

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2017

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | HISTORICAL & MILITARY | POLITICAL & ROYALTY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

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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

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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INTO THE WILD

by Jon Krakauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1996

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...

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The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).

Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor will it to readers of Krakauer's narrative. (4 maps) (First printing of 35,000; author tour)