by James H. Doolittle with Carroll V. Glines ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 1991
The reminiscences of an authentic American hero who, while best known for leading a bold airstrike against Japan early in WW II, has made his mark in a wealth of other endeavors. If the memoirs at hand read more like a bare-bones flight log than a reflective autobiography, they at least afford an engrossing record of a remarkable and eventful life. With editorial assistance from Glines (Attack on Yamamoto, Four Came Home, etc.), Doolittle (who turns 95 in October) looks back on seven decades of conspicuous accomplishment as a pilot, military officer, scholar, and businessman. Raised in gold-rush Alaska, the diminutive author earned spending money as a teenaged prizefighter and hard-rock miner. Attracted by the adventure of aviation, he left college in 1917 (one semester shy of a degree) to enlist in the US Army's Air Service. Doolittle won his wings but did not get overseas. After the Armistice, he stayed on to gain renown for the fledgling Air Corps and for himself as a daredevil stunt pilot and racer. The author also earned a Ph.D. at MIT, making substantive contributions to the emergent science of aeronautics. With a growing family to support, however, he resigned his commission in 1930 to accept a lucrative position with Shell Petroleum. Doolittle's corporate post kept him in the limelight, but his greatest acclaim lay ahead. Having rejoined the Army after war broke out in Europe, he organized and led the so-called ``Doolittle Raid'' that helped stem steady reverses in the Pacific theater and that won the author a general's stars and the Congressional Medal of Honor. Since WW II, Doolittle, an outspoken crusader for air power, has served on high-profile commissions and fared well in private enterprise. Doolittle makes a fine job of recalling his public triumphs and setbacks; beyond pro-forma tributes to his wife, though, he acknowledges or dramatizes almost no personal joys or sorrows (even the 1955 suicide of the author's son is dealt with in summary fashion). This cavil apart, a captivating account of a genuinely inspiring career. (Three 16-page photo inserts—not seen.)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1991
ISBN: 0-553-07807-0
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1991
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by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
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
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by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 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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