The escapades of Porter illustrate how the men who made the U.S. Navy great succeeded against great odds and across vast...
A technical term–packed mini-history of the War of 1812 and biography of Capt. David Porter (1780 –1843).
Daughan (If By Sea: The Forging of the American Navy—From the Revolution to the War of 1812, 2008, etc.) stuffs the book so full of nautical terms that many readers will require a dictionary to search for words not included in the glossary. Porter began his career as a merchantman when he was 16, and he eventually joined the new U.S. Navy under President John Adams. He fought in the Quasi-War with France in 1798 and spent nearly 20 months in a prison in Tripoli after fighting the Barbary pirates. The War of 1812 gave Porter his chance to advance his career. President James Madison didn’t plan on much help from the Navy until Porter’s Essex took eight prizes and then a ship of the Royal Navy. Madison sent him out again to harass British shipping in the South Atlantic, and eventually, he “doubled the horn” (sailed around) into the Pacific, where he successfully harassed British whalers. While in the Marquesas to resupply the ship, however, Porter overdid it by claiming the islands for the United States, a decision that had lasting effects for only a month after he pulled out. Mostly, he was looking for a fight with the British, who were searching the seas for him. After so many successful encounters, his arrogance would prove his undoing.
The escapades of Porter illustrate how the men who made the U.S. Navy great succeeded against great odds and across vast oceans. Daughan is obviously well-versed in and passionate about his subject, but landlubbers will find the technical terms off-putting.Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-465-01962-5
Page Count: 360
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: July 21, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2013
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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