A well-researched biography sensitive to Queen Victoria as a woman.
Australian journalist and historian Baird (Media Tarts: Female Politicians and the Press, 2004) draws on previously unpublished sources to fashion a lively, perceptive portrait of the long-reigning queen.
Victoria (1819-1901), writes the author, was an adoring wife, overbearing mother, and “a clever and forceful political calculator.” Characterizing her subject as “the most famous working mother in the world,” Baird focuses intently on love, sex, and family: Victoria’s marriage to Albert and protracted mourning after he died; her attitudes toward childbearing and mothering her extensive brood; her postpartum depressions; her adoration of the “blunt, bearded Scotsman” John Brown; and her relationships with many men in her government. Although there are few surprises for readers familiar with previous biographies by A.N. Wilson, Christopher Hibbert, Matthew Dennison, and Carrolly Erickson, to name a few, Baird shrewdly assesses the quality of the queen’s family life and creates sharply drawn portraits of the major players in her circle. The queen “budded in the presence of a man who charmed her, who confided in her and sought her approval,” such as her first prime minister, Lord Melbourne, with whom she had “one of the great platonic romances of modern history,” and the sympathetic, witty Benjamin Disraeli. As for her marriage, Baird sees both Victoria and Albert as stubborn and strong-willed. “Albert was aiming for greatness,” the author observes, and was happy when his wife was pregnant so he could take a role in governing. He believed women were inferior to men, and Victoria conceded, “Albert’s talents were superior.” As far as motherhood, Baird reveals that Victoria hated being pregnant, feared that she would die in childbirth, was sometimes “doting,” but also described her children “bluntly and often harshly” and clearly had her favorites. On the political landscape, Victoria witnessed the devastating Crimean War, uprisings across Europe, famine in Ireland, and domestic social pressures. She sought to transcend a “primarily ceremonial and symbolic” role to one of power and influence.
A well-researched biography sensitive to Queen Victoria as a woman.Pub Date: Nov. 15, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4000-6988-0
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 5, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
SEEN & HEARD
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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