by Jean-Claude Baker & Chris Chase ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1994
Latest and perhaps best of several recent bios of Josephine Baker (e.g., Phyllis Rose's Jazz Cleopatra, 1989)—this one by the performer's semiadopted/fully discarded son (owner of a Manhattan restaurant named Chez Josephine) and Chase (The Great American Waistline, 1981, etc.). Author Baker—who became the 13th member of Josephine's famous Rainbow Tribe of adopted children from all nations and colors—did all the research here (some 2,000 interviews and 3,000 letters), while Chase put his French into better-than-passable English. That this version of Josephine's life comes closest to the facts, and in no way hides behind a mask of academic research, is undeniable. The story is told by Jean-Claude, who sets the record straight on matters that his mother fibbed about in her several published autobiographies, as well as in the one left unfinished at her death. Josephine had lovers beyond number, which even she admitted, though her split with Jean-Claude came about when a Paris scandal- sheet falsely attributed to him the statement that she'd remarried yet again without benefit of divorce. The authors open with Josephine's colossal smash hit show in Paris at 19, which climaxed with her shamelessly bare-breasted, barbaric dance of seduction to a half-naked savage as she runs her hands all over him. Josephine, we learn, loved her body and spent a lot of time naked among hotel- room mirrors. We follow her through her St. Louis childhood—and her first marriage at 13 and second at 15—to her first big shows on Black Broadway and then to stardom in Paris. Bakermania erupts, her hair jell is a hit, she makes movies. Did she bed Picasso and Charles de Gaulle? Well...she died in bed at age 69, while reading fabulous reviews of her latest farewell appearance. No whitewash but sympathetic and gripping indeed. (Photos—32 pp.—not seen)
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-679-40915-7
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1993
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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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by Jon Krakauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1996
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
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.
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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