Impressively researched and insightful.
How a charismatic prophetess and her evangelical cult built a legacy in Palestine.
Tracing the life and times of Anna Spafford (1842–1923), Geniesse (Passionate Nomad: The Life of Freya Stark, 1999, etc.) illuminates the flowering of evangelical revivalism in post–Civil War Chicago, then follows a fervent band of its millennialist adherents to Ottoman-ruled Palestine. The orphaned child of Norwegian immigrants, Anna Lawson (née Larsen) first caught the eye of her Sunday school teacher, lawyer Horatio Spafford, when only 15. They later married, and Anna grew to share his conviction that Jesus Christ would be imminently arriving in Jerusalem to save the entire world—even Satan. After financial setbacks and the horrendous loss of their four daughters in a steamship sinking, the pair convinced a small group of like-minded believers to accompany them to the Holy City in 1881, fully expecting, the author relates, to participate in the Second Coming. Feeding the hungry and aiding the sick irrespective of ethnicity or religion, The Overcomers (as they had been known since Chicago days) quickly won the respect of Arab, Jew and Turk alike in a place woefully lacking amenities and sanitation. Bolstered by international recruits, the group became polyglot and often contentious; its evolution played out as a highly strung spiritual soap opera. By the time of Horatio’s death in 1888, Anna had made herself the sole “conduit to God” and usurped total authority. Her passions and proclivities waxed and waned: First she ordained celibacy, then later relented and became ultimate matchmaker. Weakened over the decades by the antipathy of U.S. consular officials, the group eventually dissolved, leaving as its legacy Jerusalem’s popular American Colony Hotel and a clinic that treats indigent children of all backgrounds.
Impressively researched and insightful.Pub Date: June 17, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-385-51926-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2008
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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