by Harry L. Katz ; The Library of Congress ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 21, 2014
Written with verve, Katz’s history is distinguished from a trove of Twain biographies by its 300 illustrations, including...
A richly illustrated life of an American icon.
Former Library of Congress curator Katz (Civil War Sketch Book, 2012, etc.) has reached deeply into the library’s archives for this commemoration of the enormously popular and prolific author. Besides offering a detailed—if familiar—narrative of Twain’s work, family and personality, Katz traces social, political and economic changes from 1850, when Twain first began publishing, until his death in 1910. After a few years in newspaper work in Hannibal, Missouri, 20-year-old Samuel Clemens set out to become a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi, but when the Civil War stopped river traffic, he decided to avoid the conflict by heading West. In Nevada and California, he became a miner, prospector and newspaper reporter, all while writing his own stories. His tall tale “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,” published in 1865 under his pen name, won accolades, leading to a multicity lecture tour. A political and cultural gadfly, Twain “challenged monarchies, autocracies, plutocracies, and leaders of the civilized world to free, educate, and employ their subjects,” writes Katz. “He railed against his Christian God…for fostering ignorance and suffering, creating havoc in the lives of humankind.” He became “a cultural lightning rod” and an outspoken shaper of public opinion. Twain loved performing, but he also depended on tours for money. Notoriously bad with finances, he repeatedly made unsound investments and ended up in debt, despite his book earnings. By the time The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn appeared in 1885—generating immediate controversy—Twain had already cemented his reputation with Innocents Abroad (1869), Roughing It (1872), The Gilded Age (1873), The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), and volumes of stories and sketches.
Written with verve, Katz’s history is distinguished from a trove of Twain biographies by its 300 illustrations, including photographs, cartoons and artwork, drawn from the LOC’s inestimable collection.Pub Date: Oct. 21, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-316-20939-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2014
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by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
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
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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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