by Georgina Howell ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 17, 2007
The enthusiastic narrative often jumps ahead of Bell’s story and then backtracks, but there’s never a dull moment in the...
From British journalist Howell, a lively biography of the daring Victorian adventurer, archaeologist and author, an early proponent of Arab self-determination.
Along with T.E. Lawrence, Bell (1868–1926) was instrumental in uniting Arab tribes against their Turkish oppressors; indeed, she is credited with helping to forge the nation of Iraq at the end of World War I. Her knowledge of the Middle East was far-reaching and formidable, thanks to decades spent traveling in the desert, sometimes alone, documenting the land and the intricacies of Bedouin life. She was the privileged granddaughter of Yorkshire industrialist Sir Isaac Lowthian Bell, an engineer and iron manufacturer. Her mother died early on, and Gertrude grew up largely under the watchful eye of her enlightened French stepmother, Florence. Restless, uneasy with the debutante’s role, Bell, a brilliant, rebellious student, craved a mission in life and found solace in climbing mountains, studying archaeology and learning languages. Her 1897 translation of Sufi poet Hafiz launched a literary career that included such classic travel books as The Desert and the Sown (1907) and The Thousand and One Churches (1909). British military intelligence, respectful of her vast firsthand knowledge of the Middle East, solicited her advice and heeded her proposals for Arab self-rule. Bell never married, and several times her life was devastated by an impossible love affair. Heartsick and exhausted, she died from what might have been a deliberate drug overdose in her Baghdad home days before her 58th birthday.
The enthusiastic narrative often jumps ahead of Bell’s story and then backtracks, but there’s never a dull moment in the peerless life of this trailblazing character.Pub Date: April 17, 2007
ISBN: 0-374-16162-3
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2007
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by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 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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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...
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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