Those with a truly intense interest in the administration of the Pulitzer Prizes might be able to find something mildly entertaining in this volume. The Pulitzer Prizes are more of an organizing theme than the actual subject of this book, which is essentially an autobiography. Hohenberg (The Pulitzer Prizes, 1974, etc.) was executive administrator of the prizes from 1954 to 1976, and he draws upon a personal diary from this time period to provide an account of his activities. The narrative is not limited to his Pulitzer work, however; the bulk of this volume is a recording of Hohenberg's wide-ranging professional activities and personal observations regarding major news events, notably conflict in postWW II China, the war in Vietnam and accompanying domestic discord, and the fall of Richard Nixon. Most of the commentary on the Pulitzers concerns the acrimony engendered within and by the Advisory Board whenever a jury's recommendations were not followed. No doubt this placed Hohenberg in an uncomfortable position as the man in the middle dealing with insulted jurors, disappointed nominees, and often a divided board, but this is hardly high drama for those not directly involved at the time. Controversial decisions deriving from the social conservatism of the board, undoubtedly the subject with the broadest potential interest, are warily noted without actually discussing them. For instance, the jury in 1960 recommended Lillian Hellman's Toys in the Attic for the drama award, but the board gave it to the musical Fiorello!; Hohenberg's sole commentary is, ``I was too stunned to say anything.'' This is a cautious account written by a devoted insider, not a titillating kiss-and-tell book. Adding to the tedium is a writing style that consists of dry, matter-of-fact prose interspersed with lengthy passages directly from Hohenberg's diary.
Pub Date: April 10, 1997
ISBN: 0-8156-0392-4
Page Count: 346
Publisher: Syracuse Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1997
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
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.
Rootin’-tootin’ history of the dry-gulchers, horn-swogglers, and outright killers who populated the Wild West’s wildest city in the late 19th century.
The stories of Wyatt Earp and company, the shootout at the O.K. Corral, and Geronimo and the Apache Wars are all well known. Clavin, who has written books on Dodge City and Wild Bill Hickok, delivers a solid narrative that usefully links significant events—making allies of white enemies, for instance, in facing down the Apache threat, rustling from Mexico, and other ethnically charged circumstances. The author is a touch revisionist, in the modern fashion, in noting that the Earps and Clantons weren’t as bloodthirsty as popular culture has made them out to be. For example, Wyatt and Bat Masterson “took the ‘peace’ in peace officer literally and knew that the way to tame the notorious town was not to outkill the bad guys but to intimidate them, sometimes with the help of a gun barrel to the skull.” Indeed, while some of the Clantons and some of the Earps died violently, most—Wyatt, Bat, Doc Holliday—died of cancer and other ailments, if only a few of old age. Clavin complicates the story by reminding readers that the Earps weren’t really the law in Tombstone and sometimes fell on the other side of the line and that the ordinary citizens of Tombstone and other famed Western venues valued order and peace and weren’t particularly keen on gunfighters and their mischief. Still, updating the old notion that the Earp myth is the American Iliad, the author is at his best when he delineates those fraught spasms of violence. “It is never a good sign for law-abiding citizens,” he writes at one high point, “to see Johnny Ringo rush into town, both him and his horse all in a lather.” Indeed not, even if Ringo wound up killing himself and law-abiding Tombstone faded into obscurity when the silver played out.
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21458-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
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