A gossipy, character-driven saga suggesting that the spoiled rich are their own worst enemies.
A prolific biographer of the rich and infamous, Oppenheimer (Madoff with the Money, 2009, etc.) digs into five generations of the Johnson family, “the most dysfunctional family in the Fortune 500.”
Founded in 1887 by three Johnson brothers, Johnson & Johnson became synonymous with products such as Band-Aids and baby powder. The author occasionally reveals corporate strategies and secrets but mostly focuses on the members of the extended Johnson family, detailing their mind-boggling personal wealth. Hundreds of names come and go throughout the narrative, with Oppenheimer concentrating on 15 blood relatives, their spouses and business partners. The book is largely a fast-paced chronicle of births, courtings, marriages, divorces, estrangements, bitter lawsuits, drug and alcohol abuses, crimes, memorable deaths and other unpleasantness. After the first generation, members of the Johnson family found it difficult to decipher whether outsiders cared about them for their personalities or only for their wealth. That kind of doubt can cause havoc with emotional stability, as Oppenheimer demonstrates with frequent salacious details of the lives of his protagonists. As is the case with his other unauthorized biographies, the author usually reveals little about whether his information derives from primary or secondary sources. The writing is clear but often painful to read due to the use of clichés and trite metaphors. One Johnson family member emerges as the chief subject: Robert Wood Johnson IV, a great-grandson of a company founder. Oppenheimer uses the nickname “Woody” to identify the protagonist, frequently coming back to his fundraising for Republican presidential candidates and his ownership of the New York Jets.
A gossipy, character-driven saga suggesting that the spoiled rich are their own worst enemies.Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-312-66211-0
Page Count: 464
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2013
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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