by Jane Zarse ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 27, 2018
A brief but powerful account of overcoming addiction.
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A recovering alcoholic details her struggles with drinking and her path to sobriety.
Despite being born into a “private school world of privilege and excess,” Zarse (Love and Compassion Is My Religion, 2016) began drinking in high school and eventually became an unrestrained alcoholic. The effects of her addiction were devastating: Her body began to fail her and her mind was similarly addled by years of relentless self-abuse. Finally financially destitute, she had to concede she was no longer fit to care for her young daughter, Paige. The longing to win Paige back inspired the author to finally give Alcoholics Anonymous an earnest shot, though she was skeptical of its ostentatious religiosity. But she discovered that a genuine spiritual commitment, understood as a full acceptance of and submission to God, was the only avenue to renewed health. The road to sobriety was a long and arduous one for Zarse. She found that alcohol provided a reprieve from her own mind, teeming with self-critical depredations. She also discovered she was a natural empath—she deeply felt the anguish of others—which made her an easy mark for predatory narcissists. With extraordinary candor the author recounts her harrowing attempt to clamber out of a deep hole dug through addiction and the principles that not only produced sobriety, but also mental well-being. And as she makes clear, sobriety is only the beginning—Zarse deftly discusses the rocky terrain between it and a return to the land of the living, including an absorbing account of dating sober and managing romantic heartache without the crutch of alcohol. The author’s writing ranges from informally conversational to aggressively proselytizing—she’s a true believer when it comes to AA and repeatedly (and one could say dogmatically) announces her commitment to its principles: “AA is not a theory. It is a life of sober, normal living. In recovery from my self-imposed crisis, I was asked to decide whether God is everything or nothing. God either is or He isn’t.” Nevertheless, her story is a remarkable one told with unflinching courage of the kind that played a major part in her recovery.
A brief but powerful account of overcoming addiction.Pub Date: July 27, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-71792-829-0
Page Count: 115
Publisher: Time Tunnel Media
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Ludwig Bemelmans ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 23, 1955
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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developed by Ludwig Bemelmans ; illustrated by Steven Salerno
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by Charlayne Hunter-Gault ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 1992
From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-17563-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
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