A biography at once serious and entertaining, sensitive and critical: an unfailing joy to read.
A sensitive treatment of one of the best-loved musicians of a generation.
Burton (Leonard Bernstein, 1994) offers a readable, comprehensive examination of Menuhin’s path from child prodigy to international musical diplomat, drawing on the wealth of extant biographical material, press clippings, and statements issued by the artist himself to paint a dispassionate portrait of one of the most multifaceted and accomplished public figures of his century. Here, Menuhin is portrayed first as a music-loving, socially conscious child controlled by a manipulative mother and an ambitious father, and later as a philanthropic polymath, a lover of yoga and Indian music, a stubborn egalitarian as comfortable taking on the politics of the New York Philharmonic as the Soviet government. Still later he appearsas an impresario, conductor, the founder of a school, and a UNESCO diplomat. Burton’s rendering of Menuhin is bright, insightful, and at times enchantingly funny—as when the three Menuhin children play to a disbelieving would-be piano coach, who remarks in wonder, “Madame Menuhin’s womb is a veritable conservatoire.” He also demonstrates a deep respect for his subject, honoring what he describes as Menuhin’s good-natured acceptance of criticism by citing almost as many negative reviews of his work as positive, though one must assume that in actual fact the latter far outweighed the former. The only significant shortcoming of this otherwise delightful work is the absence of detail with regard to Menuhin’s personal relationships. There is little discussion of his four children or his younger sister, and as far as Menuhin’s two marriages are concerned, Burton supplies only the roughest of sketches. Nevertheless, the absence leaves the reader wanting to know more about Menuhin, not less. With each chapter, Burton does his readers a great service by providing recommendations for recordings to augment the reading experience.
A biography at once serious and entertaining, sensitive and critical: an unfailing joy to read.Pub Date: Feb. 28, 2001
ISBN: 1-55553-465-1
Page Count: 544
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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