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INSANE SISTERS

OR, THE PRICE PAID FOR CHALLENGING A COMPANY TOWN

A thorough examination of two sisters’ property battles with the Atlas Portland Cement Company in Ilasco, Mo., in 1910—27. Ilasco was a company town whose story was first told by Andrews (History/Southwest Texas State Univ., San Marcos) in City of Dust (not reviewed). While conducting research for that book, he discovered in courthouse records the labyrinthine legal struggles of two sisters, Mollie Heinbach and Feemy Koller, who for nearly two decades combated agents of powerful Atlas for control of 26 acres which had first belonged to Samuel Heinbach, a blowzy, alcoholic eccentric with a malfunctioning sphincter. Having buried her third husband, Mollie—to the wonder of the other residents—courted and won Heinbach, then cared for him devotedly for two years until his death in 1910. His will, which left all to Mollie, was promptly contested by Heinbach’s other relatives, and thus began a 17-year deluge of lawsuits, hearings, stays, injunctions, trials, motions, and other madness, all of which Andrews fondly chronicles in this fascinating and ultimately melancholy account of two savvy sisters who quite literally fought city hall. Eventually, juries (all male) declared both women legally insane, Atlas acquired the property, and Feemy (who had eagerly entered the fray at her sister’s side) died, broke and broken, in a state mental hospital. In his excavations of newspaper archives and of county and state court records, Andrews has unearthed numerous treasures of detail—e.g., Mollie’s first husband bore the scars of knife fights, Mollie needed an ear trumpet to follow testimony in her sanity hearing. Neither a lyrical writer nor a stylist with a supply of fresh images (in this book, starts are rocky, gossip runs wild, and towns grow like mushrooms), Andrews nonetheless guides readers through this serpentine story with a sturdy, conventional clarity. A sympathetic portrait of two dynamic and determined women, whose case—a clash of “gender, class, and law”—illustrates the profound inequalities in early 20th century American culture and jurisprudence. (18 illustrations, not seen)

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1999

ISBN: 0-8262-1240-9

Page Count: 256

Publisher: Univ. of Missouri

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1999

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NIGHT

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. 

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.

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

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

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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