The golden arches of McDonald’s, resplendent in the dour precincts of Pushkin Square, are symbols of the triumph of capitalism. That Ronald McDonald cavorts in Nizhni Novgorod and St. Petersburg may seem inevitable now, but time was when it was inconceivable. It took the chief cook and battle fighter of the Canadian arm of the burger empire to make such marketing history. In this far from bashful business autobiography, Cohon tells how he worked from perestroika through glasnost, from Brezhnev to Yeltsin, to bring “Beeg Meks” and fries to hungry Russians. During the 14 years of negotiation, Cohon had to explain the concept of hamburgers to myriad apparatchiks. He developed warm relationships with several bigwigs, including his pal Mikhail Gorbachev, who provided the foreword for this text. The essential democracy of fast food complemented the post-Soviet social upheavals, as did the “rubles only” policy, contrasted with the “hard currency only” rules of more upscale eateries. The natives loved the open door and the friendly crew as well as the food that burger diplomat Cohon insists is healthy. After all, he had to grow the potatoes and cook the ketchup to meet company standards. Indeed, the network of suppliers proved the greatest challenge. The account seems as devoid of guile as an Egg McMuffin. Throughout, Cohon refers to the inspiring sayings of Chairman Ray Kroc, who gave him the Canadian franchise in the first place. The author, born in Chicago, is now a citizen of Canada, where the book first appeared. He speaks of “pop” (for “soda”), writes “cheques,” and mentions celebrities who—with the possible exception of Pierre Trudeau—are, regretfully, unnoticed below the border. An animated story extolling the author’s family, friends, faith, and business adventures, told in straightforward fashion. Like the billionth Big Mac, it’s not haute cuisine but is satisfactory on its own level. (32 pages b&w photos)
Pub Date: May 10, 1999
ISBN: 0-7710-2198-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1999
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
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
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.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
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