Wilkinson offers little in the way of passion or illumination to enliven this account of the dazzling reign of the Sun King.
A new biography of “the most legendary king ever to sit on the throne of France.”
In this surprisingly dry treatment, British biographer Wilkinson (The Princes in the Tower: Did Richard III Murder His Nephews, Edward V & Richard of York?, 2015, etc.) focuses more on the king’s romantic entanglements than on his acts and legacy. For a staggering 72 years, Louis XIV (1638-1715) reigned over an efflorescent France, inheriting the throne at age 4 in 1643 and ruling until just shy of age 77 in 1715. Early on during his reign, he was under the wing of his regent mother, Anne, and influential minister Cardinal Mazarin, and he saw France through numerous costly wars with his European neighbors, conflicts that allowed the country to enjoy political predominance, key annexations, and a flourishing French culture. Schooled by the Jesuits and in the statecraft of the crafty Mazarin, Louis liked the work of running a country and decided to do it himself, breaking with precedent and dispensing with a first minister. He had learned that his noble sycophants, such as the superintendent of finances, Nicolas Fouquet, were robbing him blind, and he embraced his kingly role with relish. Moreover, he desired that France be self-sufficient in various industries and became a fervent patron of French arts and culture, establishing royal academies of dance and letters and subsidizing the work of playwright Molière and composer Jean-Baptiste Lully. Too much of Wilkinson’s plodding narrative details the romantic court intrigues, including Louis’ extramarital affairs with Louise de La Vallière and Madame de Montespan, and his happy late-life second marriage to the governess of the royal children, Madame de Maintenon. Sadly, the romance rarely sizzles, and the author doesn’t provide enough big-picture analysis of significant points in his subject’s life—e.g., his stoking of the War of Spanish Succession.
Wilkinson offers little in the way of passion or illumination to enliven this account of the dazzling reign of the Sun King.Pub Date: March 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-64313-015-6
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Pegasus
Review Posted Online: Nov. 20, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2018
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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