The Excellent Adventures of the Five Royal Cousins: sometimes solemn, sometimes frisky, but always captivating. (16 pp....
Laudatory concurrent biographies trace the intertwined lives of a quintet of princesses.
For these comely royal cousins, all granddaughters of England’s dear, stately Queen Victoria, it was good—at least for a while—to sport coronets and kind hearts throughout Europe at the start of the 20th century. The five princesses ruled as Alexandra of Russia, Marie of Romania, Victoria Eugenie of Spain, Sophie of Greece, and Maud of Norway. For their thrones, the blue-blooded girls were obliged to adopt new homes, new religions, and new languages. With considerable use of private correspondence and related primary sources, independent historian Gelardi deals with more queens than you’ll find in a deck of cards. Naturally, there are kings too, and a few knaves: innocent Tsar Nicholas, Grand Duke Ernie, Prince Frank, the German Kaiser, and naughty King Carol. Tsarina Alexandra is mesmerized by Rasputin, then dies with her family at Ekaterinburg in the oft-told story. Unrestrained Marie cavorts with the smart set, the Astors, and a friendly fellow named Klondike Boyle. Queen Victoria Eugenie (“Ena” for short) deals with Generalissimo Franco. Along with marriage arrangements within the extended family, each memorialized with carefully formulated treaties, the story is marked by funerals, abdications, bombings, revolutions, world wars, and one royal palace lacking a lav or running water. The hereditary red thread of hemophilia surfaces from time to time as the narrative roves from Balmoral to the Winter Palace and the traditional role of the nobility fades. There were rewards, too; Gelardi notes the “paroxysms of elation” and “tumultuous greeting” of loyal subjects who were often “convulsed with excitement” at the sight of their sovereigns. But by the middle of the century, it was all over.
The Excellent Adventures of the Five Royal Cousins: sometimes solemn, sometimes frisky, but always captivating. (16 pp. color photos, not seen)Pub Date: March 16, 2005
ISBN: 0-312-32423-5
Page Count: 544
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2004
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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
