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THE MAN TIME FORGOT

Name: THE MAN TIME FORGOT
Author: Isaiah Wilner
ISBN: 0-06-050549-4

A TALE OF GENIUS, BETRAYAL, AND THE CREATION OF TIME MAGAZINE

by Isaiah Wilner ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 2006

An intriguing and depressing tale, related with great skill and compassion.

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Wilner’s debut restores the legacy of Briton Hadden, co-creator of Time magazine, whose partner Henry R. Luce systematically downplayed his contributions after Hadden died, at 30, of a mysterious infection.

The author became interested in this subject while editing the Yale Daily News, housed in New Haven’s Briton Hadden Memorial Building. (As an undergraduate at Yale, Hadden had been an editor, then chairman, of the News.) Reading the work of his eminent predecessor, Wilner was struck by its style: “rhythmic, compact, it practically jumped off the page—much like the impish voice of the early Time.” A student essay about Hadden won Wilner access to the Time Inc. archives, where he found a trove of material. He also interviewed many relatives of Hadden, Luce and other Time staffers, and he appears to have read every issue of the magazine, from its debut in March 1923 until Hadden’s death, in 1929. His solidly researched narrative follows both men from 1898—when Hadden was born to money, Luce to missionaries—but focuses on the years during which their stories merged, beginning in prep school at Hotchkiss and continuing to Yale and Time. Each was a ferocious competitor, Hadden always finishing a close first in their professional sprints. As Wilner portrays him, Hadden was furiously energetic and creative; he worked hard, drank harder and appears to have viewed each day as his personal Roman candle. The author believes that Luce and Hadden, though competitive, were also deeply attached—“love” is a word he uses to characterize their relationship. This did not prevent Luce from removing his friend’s name from the Time masthead following Hadden’s death (it was not restored until after Luce died, in 1967) or from, in Wilner’s word, “burying Hadden’s role in history.” The author does an excellent job of re-creating the tension, pain and jealousy attending Time’s birth and of showing how the weekly magazine has affected the profession of journalism and the packaging of news.

An intriguing and depressing tale, related with great skill and compassion.

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2006

ISBN: 0-06-050549-4

Page Count: 352

Publisher: HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2006

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | 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)