A winning combination of measured, balanced research and critical evaluation—the definitive account of an important figure...
An ambitious, timely biography of Soong May-ling (1897–2003), better known as Madame Chiang Kai-shek.
To tell this complex story, Pakula (An Uncommon Woman: Empress Frederick, Daughter of Queen Victoria, Wife of the Crown Prince of Prussia, 1995, etc.) steps back and patiently recounts the twilight of the Manchu Dynasty, when May-ling’s father, Charlie Soong, was educated by Methodist missionaries, studied in American universities and achieved business success in thriving Shanghai. Sending his children to study in America seemed a natural progression, part of the reform movement when most of China was still agrarian, peasant and illiterate. May-ling graduated from Wellesley College in 1917, fluent in English and American ways, which would later enable her to deftly navigate between East and West. Meanwhile, Charlie had made an important friend and ally in the doctor turned agitator Sun Yat-sen, who had resolved to drive out the Manchus, and further befriended Sun’s hot-headed deputy Chiang Kai-shek. Charlie’s political connections determined that his three daughters would find powerful husbands. Ai-ling married into a prominent banking family that would later finance the Nationalist government; Ching-ling married Sun; and May-ling married Chiang (even though he was already married). Pakula portrays May-ling from an evenhanded sampling of correspondence, memoir and public record, as she was widely traveled and interviewed over the years, drumming up American support and dollars for the Nationalist cause in the face of Mao’s Communist incursions. Irrepressible, charming, venal and loyal to the cause of her husband, May-ling seemed to be equally admired and vilified. Although the Americans ultimately concluded that they had “picked a bad horse” in Chiang, his wife proved a shrewd, fascinating character around whom Chinese history momentously convulsed.
A winning combination of measured, balanced research and critical evaluation—the definitive account of an important figure in 20th-century Chinese politics.Pub Date: Nov. 3, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-4391-4893-8
Page Count: 800
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2009
BOOK REVIEW
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
SEEN & HEARD
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