A life intriguingly lived is engagingly recounted for today’s generation.
A patriarch reminisces about the astonishing lifestyle changes observed during the last century in this debut autobiography.
Ira I. Boggs began his life in West Virginia. Born into a large clan of meager circumstances, he was educated in a one-room schoolhouse and helped till the family’s farmland: “In those days, children, women, and everybody worked with a hoe, an ax, or other tools—a horse and plow or an ox and plow.” Never shying away from hard work, he helped his family clear dense fields of lumber to add farmland. In 1917, he volunteered for the Army and fought in World War I. He avoided direct conflict but was exposed to the influenza pandemic. Upon his return, he worked in drilling, which took him to Texas and then California. The moderate California climate suited his fragile health, but he missed his home state. By the 1930s, he had returned to West Virginia to resettle near his family. He married, built his own home, and eventually had 11 children whom he provided for with a successful career in engineering. Over his lifetime, he witnessed a great change in technology, from planting fields barefoot to removing fuel from the earth. He survived epic clashes and even fought in a World War. In the end, it was the beauty and comforts of home that called him back to where he began. The book—written with debut author Dallas E. Boggs, Ira’s son—is a captivating glimpse of another time, offering perspectives and insights into an era when large families cultivated the land and were able to provide for themselves with a minimal amount of store-bought goods. Detailed descriptions of seasonal activities, such as putting up winter stores or rendering soap from pig carcasses, deftly document a fading knowledge and expertise. As a Boggs family chronicle, it is sure to be cherished by future generations of the clan. For mainstream audiences, the enjoyable book would improve through tightening the text and offering a more linear timeline. A few photographs are included, but the addition of a family genealogy and maps would aid readers.
A life intriguingly lived is engagingly recounted for today’s generation.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-68118-788-4
Page Count: 309
Publisher: Tate Publishing & Enterprises, LLC
Review Posted Online: Dec. 20, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
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.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
SEEN & HEARD
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