The celebrated trial lawyer and TV commentator (With Justice for None, 1989, etc.) proves that even a shameless self-publicist can be likeable. This volume recounts the years before Spence gained renown for the Karen Silkwood, Randy Weaver, and other trials. His father, who lived into his 90s, was a lifelong model of decency; Spence's deeply religious mother, however, placed a burden of guilt on the son by committing suicide during his rebellious youth. Like many an autobiographer, Spence finds his childhood more interesting than his readers will, but with adolescence the narrative takes off. That his prose is melodramatic merely seems fitting; Spence's worldview is melodramatic. After a few youthful adventures along brothel-and-merchant-marine lines, he returns to his native Wyoming. While still in college, he meets and marries his first wife. He finds law school easy but the first few years of practicing hard. It will come as a surprise to those familiar with Spence's current social views that he served two terms as a vice-busting county prosecutor and ran for Congress in 1962 as a right-wing Republican; his drubbing in that race turned him to despair, drink, and evidently his famous concern for the ``little guy.'' He recalls with pride his record of vastly increasing jury awards to plaintiffs, but describes with shame his inadequacies as husband and father during those years. In the end, he runs off with his second wife, stops drinking with help from Alcoholics Anonymous, and lives happily ever after, more or less. In an age of self-justification, Spence casts a relentlessly cold eye on his bad behavior as family man, lawyer, and sometime politician. Some readers should, however, find inspiration in Spence's ability to level with himself and still get over his self- loathing, and others will at least enjoy his story. (60 b&w photos, not seen) (Author tour)
Pub Date: Oct. 13, 1996
ISBN: 0-312-14673-6
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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