Barthel sets Seton’s life against the roiling political context of the American Revolution and its aftermath, offering a...
A biography of the first American saint, who described herself as “the Mad Enthusiast.”
Elizabeth Seton (1774–1821) was elevated to sainthood in 1975 on the basis of her religious fervor and several posthumous miracles. Barthel (A Death in California, 1981, etc.) vividly brings to life a strong-willed, contradictory, passionate woman. Born into a notable New York family (her father was a famous physician), Seton, like many other wealthy Americans, was raised as an Episcopalian. Catholicism was illegal in New York; even after it became legal in 1790, it was associated with “dirty, filthy, red-faced” immigrants. However, at the age of 30, after her husband died of tuberculosis in Italy, Seton stepped foot into a Catholic church. Overwhelmed by the spectacle of Sunday Mass, she collapsed, sobbing. For the next few months, she lived with devout Italian friends and fell in love with the “handsome, dashing” 39-year-old brother of her host. By the time Seton returned to America, she was determined to convert. Her friends and family were scandalized, but Seton felt that “Jesus came to her in a profoundly intimate way” through the Eucharist, and she felt close to Mary as well. The Catholic Church, she was certain, was “the one, true church of Christ.” Seton was not content merely to worship. Through arduous efforts and political astuteness, she founded and directed the first order of American nuns, countering church authorities who wanted to limit women’s participation. Whether lured by Seton’s own charisma, Catholic doctrine or several attractive young priests, other women joined her. The Sisters of Charity survived and shaped the future of American Catholicism.
Barthel sets Seton’s life against the roiling political context of the American Revolution and its aftermath, offering a rounded portrait of an ambitious woman who struggled mightily to fulfill the tenets of her faith: to be obedient, merciful and good.Pub Date: March 4, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-312-57162-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2013
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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