An overly detailed but entertainingly irreverent account of two consequential men from the dawn of the American republic.
A parallel biography of two prominent figures from the Federalist era whose lives came into catastrophic collision on a dueling ground.
Alexander Hamilton had a dazzling career as a young man. Chief aide to George Washington during the American Revolution and author of most of the Federalist Papers, as the first secretary of the treasury, he performed the miracle of putting the new nation's finances on a sound footing. Aaron Burr, a lawyer of prominence and brilliance equal to Hamilton's, engaged in politics to advance his own interests rather than any cause. He came within a single electoral vote of being elected president in Thomas Jefferson's place in 1800, gaining the vice presidency and Jefferson's enmity instead. Sedgwick (In My Blood: Six Generations of Madness and Desire in an American Family, 2007, etc.) presents an emotional and psychological biography of the pair, partially inspired by Gore Vidal's satirical novel Burr (1973). In crisp, lively prose, the author presents evenhanded and insightful profiles of two highly intelligent, driven men with substantial flaws and very different characters: the hyperactive Hamilton, of volcanic output and intense devotion to the Federalist cause, the brooding and libidinous Burr, communicating in code, both attached to the contemporary lethal cult of honor. Sedgwick strives to present this as something of a Greek drama in which his characters gradually swirl closer together, increasing in hostility until their duel appears almost inevitable. The strategy is not entirely successful. Burr and Hamilton cooperated occasionally and didn't come into conflict with each other often or sharply enough to warrant the characterization as archrivals. By the time of their duel, they were both washed up, in severe financial distress, and with no political prospects. It almost seems as though they fought because they no longer had anything better to do.
An overly detailed but entertainingly irreverent account of two consequential men from the dawn of the American republic.Pub Date: Nov. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-59240-852-8
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Aug. 14, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2015
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
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
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