A gripping narrative about a flawed, but ultimately pitiable, king.
A biography of Wilhelm II, who oversaw the collapse of the German empire.
MacDonogh’s (Frederick the Great, 2001, etc.) Wilhelm runs hot and cold. Sometimes full of bluster, his saber-rattling contributed to the outbreak of the Great War, but at other times the last Kaiser was given to compromise in international disputes. The central figure of Wilhelm’s childhood was his mother, Vicky, daughter of Queen Victoria of Britain. Vicky dominated his father, Frederick III, who died only a few months after assuming the throne. Once Wilhelm took over, he invigorated the government, bypassing the legendary Bismarck and establishing liberal policies in the conservative Prussian-centered empire. His choice of archaeology as a hobby signified his modern state of mind, which was put to good use in the development of German schools and infrastructure. From his mother, Wilhelm inherited a love-hate relationship with the English, whom he felt treated Germany like a second-class state, and much of his foreign policy (such as his rapid buildup of the navy) was designed to earn the respect of the British—who responded by identifying Germany as their enemy. The author shifts the focus of his account away from WWI once the fighting begins, however, and concentrates instead on how Wilhelm vacillated at crucial moments, losing the confidence of his advisers. Initially, the Kaiser worked hard to avoid catastrophe, especially in his diplomacy with Russia and his cousin Czar Nicholas, but eventually the entangling alliances of the period, as well as a bellicose German public, overwhelmed him. In the end, Wilhelm’s standing fell with Germany’s fortunes on the battlefield. By 1917, the army had taken over government, relegating Wilhelm to a purely ceremonial role. The last hundred pages of the biography detail Wilhelm’s eclipse and exile in Holland—painful reading compared to the earlier parts of the story (which show him as a sometimes heroic, if reckless, character). His ambivalence towards the Nazis—he supported their nationalism but was disturbed by Hitler’s tactics—was all the more tragic because it was irrelevant.
A gripping narrative about a flawed, but ultimately pitiable, king.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-312-27673-7
Page Count: 416
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2001
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
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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