A hard look at Internet culture and the wunderkind it failed in the end.
The spectacular life and tragic downfall of an American iconoclast.
In his debut, Slate correspondent and Columbia Journalism Review contributing editor Peters attempts to bring controversial concepts around content ownership and open access into context by examining the life and untimely death of one of the country’s most visible advocates for “content liberation,” Aaron Swartz (1986-2013). However, the book is an expansion of the author’s 2013 Slate article of the same name, so the new material feels like filler at times. But Peters presents a compelling sketch of a genius with real troubles, much of it presented through his subject’s own words. Swartz was many things, from a serial entrepreneur to a fundamental agent in the creation of initiatives like Creative Commons and Reddit. What put the Internet activist in hot water was his raid on JSTOR, a repository for academic journals, from which Swartz downloaded a significant number of articles. After he was arrested, his legal prosecution was excessive, even by the most conservative standards. Swartz was hit with more than a dozen felony charges that potentially carried with them more than 30 years in prison and $1 million in fines. Despite the zeal of prosecutors to single him out as a cautionary tale, their case ultimately failed. Sadly, Swartz turned down a plea bargain and two days later committed suicide. The book is a strange hybrid of biography, cultural journalism, and speculation that relies too heavily on legal documentation, hacker lore, and questionable conjecture based on close readings of blog posts made by Swartz. While he does present a detailed timeline of Swartz’s life and legacy, Peters’ analysis of the history and culture surrounding the book’s central thesis fails to find a solid point of view. Readers seeking a more nuanced portrait of Aaron Swartz might find more insightful commentary in the 2014 documentary The Internet’s Own Boy.
A hard look at Internet culture and the wunderkind it failed in the end.Pub Date: Jan. 12, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4767-6772-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Oct. 31, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2015
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
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
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