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FIRST MAN

THE LIFE OF NEIL A. ARMSTRONG

Though without the exuberance of Tom Wolfe’s The Right Stuff, Hansen’s big biography does a good job of showing how and why...

The first human on the moon is a nice guy, writes admiring biographer Hansen (History/Auburn Univ.), but one not afraid of fighting and politicking to be the first.

When, on July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong stepped onto the lunar surface from Apollo 11, the spacecraft he commanded, the world united for a minute. Russian communist newspaper Pravda called the crew “three courageous men,” while a Czech commentator said, “This is the America we love, one so totally different from the America that fights in Vietnam.” Even the French joined in, with France-Soir calling the landing “the greatest adventure in the history of humanity.” By Hansen’s account, Armstrong had a certain affect on people; though he was customarily the youngest (and smallest) of his military cohort, he had all the grit, diplomatic skill and tenacity necessary to get things done. He also had a talent for walking away from near-misses with death, both as a carrier-based Navy pilot during the Korean War and as a NASA test pilot in the California desert. Though Hansen can be portentous (noting, for instance, that the etymology of “Neil” is either “cloud” or “champion”), he is not inclined to reflexive hero worship. The Armstrong he presents is capable of scrapping bitterly with hero and fellow test pilot Chuck Yeager (who, Armstrong said, was a good flyer but “seemed to have less interest in precision and getting information and drawing conclusions,” as a test pilot was supposed to), and equally capable of pulling rank (he beat out Buzz Aldrin to be first out Apollo’s door). To his credit, too, Hansen enjoys demolishing myths, showing that the small-town stargazer who supposedly gave Armstrong his start was merely a good self-promoter and that Yeager had nothing on Armstrong in the cool department.

Though without the exuberance of Tom Wolfe’s The Right Stuff, Hansen’s big biography does a good job of showing how and why Armstrong has entered the history books.

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2005

ISBN: 0-7432-5631-X

Page Count: 848

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2005

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NIGHT

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. 

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.

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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INTO THE WILD

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)

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

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