The continuing story of a London busker and his feline friend, Bob.
For those who read A Street Cat Named Bob (2013) and wondered what happened to the dynamic duo of James, a former drug addict and vendor for the street newspaper The Big Issue, and his cat companion, Bob, look no farther. Bowen expands on the story of his former life as a drug addict and the many ways Bob continues to be his faithful friend. "I always said that we were partners, that we needed each other equally,” he writes. “Deep down I believed that wasn't really true. I felt like I needed him more." When Bowen was struck by an unrelenting pain in his leg, making it impossible to stand or walk, Bob was there to help him through it. When the author had a severe chest cold, once again, Bob indicated through his small gestures, like resting his head on Bowen's chest, that he understood Bowen was ill and empathized with him. Seeing a stranger overdose in his own apartment stairwell jolted Bowen to fight his own cravings. "An addict is always living on a knife's edge…all [the destructive behavior] needed was one moment of weakness and I could be on the way down again,” he writes. While Bowen steadily worked his way out of addiction, silly cat moments, such as Bob's fascination with packaging, especially bubble wrap and boxes, kept him amused and happy. But he still had self-doubts about his life. Nosy strangers insisted Bob was being maltreated, and other vendors accused Bowen of breaking vending rules, which caused his license to be suspended. Then, everything changed with the unexpected success of his first book, which Bowen acknowledges is entirely due to his best friend, Bob.
A simple, heartwarming story of continued companionship and mutual trust and respect. Though the book is averagely written, it is sure to be another best-seller.Pub Date: May 27, 2014
ISBN: 978-1250046321
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: April 16, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
Categories: GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR
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BOOK REVIEW
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
Categories: GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | PHILOSOPHY & RELIGION | PSYCHOLOGY | HISTORICAL & MILITARY
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
Categories: BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | HOLOCAUST | HISTORY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL HISTORY
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