by Harvey Sachs ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 1995
Sachs is explicitly out to set the record straight in this detailed, scholarly biography of the legendary pianist. At the end of his long life and almost as lengthy career as one of the century's greatest keyboard virtuosos, Arthur Rubinstein (18871982) authored two bestselling autobiographies, My Young Years and My Many Years. Readers who mistrusted the tone of continuous joie de vivre that characterized these books will find this serious ``life and works'' by music biographer Sachs (Toscanini, 1978, etc.) a welcome corrective. Rubinstein was not above fudging, misremembering, or glossing over the facts if it served his purpose of a more congenial self-portrayal. His many and notorious love affairs involved more infidelity than he let on. He was a thoughtless (if guilt-ridden) son, a mediocre, self-involved father, and an errant husband. Sachs is no basher, however, and he never forgets that this big baby was not a bad man. He was also the possessor of a huge, God-given talent that manifested itself before Rubinstein was five and that, to his credit, he never abused. And while the fan-magazine crowd will enjoy the extensive coverage of Rubinstein's international celebrity, social life, and numerous amours, music lovers will find nourishment in Sachs's extensive research into Rubinstein's concert vita, his artistic development, and his repertoire choices. Best of all, particularly given the difficulty of writing meaningfully about how any given pianist actually sounded, is the extensive discussion (one-fifth of the book's length) of Rubinstein's ``recorded legacy,'' accompanied by a truly excellent discography (compiled by Donald Manildi, curator of the International Piano Archives) of Rubinstein on 78, LP, CD, and even reproducing piano roll. Sachs's comments on his own experience with Rubinstein's playing, both live and on record, are balanced, thoughtful, and honest in their overt subjectivity. A book with something for almost everyone, and a worthy incentive to investigate Rubinstein's unique artistry. (photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-8021-1579-9
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1995
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by Ta-Nehisi Coates ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 8, 2015
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
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The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
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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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