Fawning and trivial. How much is there to say about someone whose main claim to fame is that he wore the first modern, urban...
The insubstantial life of a turn-of-the-18th-century party boy and clotheshorse.
George Brummell (1778–1840) reigned briefly in London society before being hounded out of the country in 1816, plagued by debts and failing health. British biographer Kelly (Cooking for Kings, not reviewed) aims to celebrate Brummell’s lasting contribution to men’s fashion as the prototypical dandy (according to such contemporary observers as Byron and later admirers like Oscar Wilde). A commoner whose father made a fortune as Lord North’s private secretary, young Brummell grew up on Downing Street and was sent to Eton, where he mingled among the upper crust and made his mark with witty put-downs, a handsome figure and an understated elegance of dress. Indeed, by the time he came of age in 1799, Brummell was a favorite of the Prince of Wales. Blessed with a considerable inheritance, he could step out in style from his residence at 4 Chesterfield Street in Mayfair. He rode in Hyde Park, dined and gambled at White’s and Brook’s and attended the theater in the company of famous demimondaines Harriette Wilson and Julia Johnstone. “Beau,” as he became known, was mostly remarkable for his choice of tailoring. Tall and well-sculpted, he favored a deceptively simple, manly look, distinguished by exquisite attention to detail. Kelly quotes Max Beerbohm, who called Brummell “the Father of Modern Costume” and praised his style as “free from folly or affection, yet susceptible to exquisite ordering.” But in later years, his credit wore thin, his barbs no longer struck the Prince Regent’s funny bone and Brummell contracted syphilis, leading to unhappy retirement in Normandy, madness and death in an asylum.
Fawning and trivial. How much is there to say about someone whose main claim to fame is that he wore the first modern, urban suit?Pub Date: May 10, 2006
ISBN: 0-7432-7089-4
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Free Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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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