Donne would be pleased with this intelligent, affectionate, articulate telling of his story.
A major biography of the poet and preacher, who knew Shakespeare, accommodated himself to three difficult monarchs and left behind a significant literary legacy.
In his impressive debut, Stubbs moves with ease through the complex life of a man who lived in a time of profound religious, political and cultural upheaval. Because John Donne (1572–1631) was such a public person for much of his life—a poet, a bureaucrat, the Dean of St. Paul’s—and because a number of his regular correspondents kept his letters, his biographer has much documentary evidence to support this account. Born into a Catholic family, Donne learned to adapt his views and behavior to the prevailing political and religious mood. He also, Stubbs ably demonstrates, retained his humanity and moral integrity. He left home early for Oxford but received no degree because he could not sign the religious Oath of Allegiance. (Later, James I made certain that Cambridge awarded Donne a doctorate.) He lived and studied law at Lincoln’s Inn, sailed with Essex and Ralegh, earned a powerful position as secretary to Sir Thomas Egerton, spent some time in the House of Commons. But he nearly lost it all in 1601 when he secretly married teenaged Ann More, enraging her family and annoying Queen Elizabeth. Ann subsequently gave birth to a dozen children and died shortly after delivering a stillbirth in August 1617. (Stubbs is not always so specific about dates; a chronology would have improved the book.) By then, Donne had turned his back on the secular world. Noted as a bachelor for his popular satires and sexy poems, he was chastened by poverty and the struggle to support his family; some powerful friends and James’s royal caprices persuaded him to take religious vows early in 1615. He became one of England’s most influential preachers—in his lifetime and beyond.
Donne would be pleased with this intelligent, affectionate, articulate telling of his story.Pub Date: April 1, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-393-06260-1
Page Count: 576
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2007
BOOK REVIEW
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
An engrossing, intense, and highly descriptive narrative chronicling the ghastly conditions three pregnant women suffered...
The incredible true story of three Jewish women who survived the Holocaust.
Priska, Rachel, and Anka were married Jewish women in their early 20s when the Nazis took control of Europe. Like millions of other Jews, they were forced to give up their normal lives, all of their belongings, and their homes. Shuttled into ghettos and then off to one of the most notorious camps, Auschwitz II-Birkenau, they suffered through the Nazis’ increasing atrocities. But these three women all held a secret: they were pregnant. They were moved from Auschwitz and ended up in Mauthausen, another notorious death camp. With facing the most horrible conditions imaginable, all three gave birth right before the Allies accepted Germany’s surrender. In this meticulously detailed account, Holden (Haatchi & Little B: The Inspiring True Story of One Boy and His Dog, 2014, etc.) compiles an enormous amount of information from interviews, letters, historical records, and personal visits to the sites where this story unfolded. The graphic history places readers in the moment and provides a sense of the enduring power of love that Priska, Rachel, and Anka had for their unborn children and for the husbands they so desperately hoped to see after the war. Even though it occurred more than 70 years ago, the story’s truth is so chillingly portrayed that it seems as if it could have happened recently. These three women and their infants survived in the face of death, and, Holden writes, “their babies went on to have babies of their own and create a second and then a third generation, all of whom continue to live their lives in defiance of Hitler’s plan to erase them from history and from memory.”
An engrossing, intense, and highly descriptive narrative chronicling the ghastly conditions three pregnant women suffered through at the hands of the Nazis.Pub Date: May 5, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-237025-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2015
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