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CASE BY CASE

Name: CASE BY CASE
Author: Ib Melchior
ISBN: 0-89141-444-4

A U.S. ARMY COUNTERINTELLIGENCE AGENT IN WORLD WAR II

by Ib Melchior ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 1993

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An absorbing memoir of the Danish-born author's WW II experiences with the American military, which obviously provided a starting point for the many thrillers he later wrote as a civilian (Code Name: Grand Guignol, 1987, etc.). When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, Melchior was working as a stage manager at Radio City Music Hall. Having already decided to become a US citizen, the multilingual author volunteered his services to the armed forces. Melchior, then 24, was rigorously trained by the OSS and subsequently assigned to the Army's Counterintelligence Corps. He eventually spent two years in the ETO, advancing with Allied troops from Normandy through France, Luxembourg (during the Battle of the Bulge), and Germany as far as the Czechoslovakian border. In the course of an eventful tour, the author proved cunning as well as effective in his pursuit of collaborators, high-ranking Nazis, saboteurs, spies, war criminals, etc. While much of his work as a field investigator was routine (e.g., screening displaced persons, discharged soldiers, undocumented travelers, or local pols whose backgrounds qualified them for office in the interim governments established by the American military), he was a party to a full ration of dramatic moments. Among other accomplishments, he and fellow operatives uncovered a band of so-called Werewolves (Wehrmacht fanatics left behind the lines to engage in terrorist acts against the populist and invasion forces). He also helped unearth stolen art treasures and caches of contraband weapons while unmasking any number of SS personnel (subject to mandatory arrest) who posed as refugees to evade capture. In 1990, Melchior and his wife retraced the route he took through Europe when it was being liberated. His brief account of this sentimental journey adds considerable resonance to a narrative already rich in anecdotal detail and high adventure. (Illustrations—not seen.)

Pub Date: March 1, 1993

ISBN: 0-89141-444-4

Page Count: 384

Publisher: Presidio/Random

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1993

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | HISTORICAL & MILITARY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

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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

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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INTO THE WILD

by Jon Krakauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1996

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...

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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.

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor will it to readers of Krakauer's narrative. (4 maps) (First printing of 35,000; author tour)