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BUDDHA
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BUDDHA

by Karen Armstrong ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 19, 2001

Those who wish to acquaint themselves with how Buddhism came to be, and with the individual who created it, will find this...

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An excellent primer on the Buddha’s life and teachings.

Departing from her usual Judeo-Christian stomping grounds (The Battle for God, 2000, etc.) to pen a biography of Siddhatha Gotama (circa 563-483 b.c.), Armstrong admits up front that she has set herself no easy task. The little information available about his life simply will not “satisfy the criteria of modern scientific history.” In addition, Gotama himself would likely reject an effort to chronicle his doings, as “throughout his life he fought against the cult of personality and endlessly deflected the attention of his disciples from himself.” In response to these difficulties, Armstrong has produced not so much a rendering of the few extant details of Gotama’s quotidian life, but an account of how his circumstances led him to develop one of the great religions. She makes vivid the vanished world of the turbulent Ganges basin from outlines provided by the earliest texts available, those written in the North Indian dialect of Pali and preserved by Buddhists in Sri Lanka, Burma, and Thailand. Beginning with Gotama’s rejection of his family to join one of the many bands of mendicant monks in search of a higher truth, Armstrong creates a profile of an intensely practical man. When he cannot reach Nirvana using any other teacher’s practice, Gotama makes up his own, rejecting “abstruse theories about the creation of the universe or the existence of a Supreme Being” in favor of a series of practices to be strictly followed. The resultant religion was based entirely on actions and was open to all, something truly revolutionary in a land whose culture was based on an unshakable caste system. Armstrong details these practices and theories and also provides an invaluable glossary.

Those who wish to acquaint themselves with how Buddhism came to be, and with the individual who created it, will find this an essential text.

Pub Date: Feb. 19, 2001

ISBN: 0-670-89193-2

Page Count: 205

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2000

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | PHILOSOPHY & RELIGION

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NIGHT
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NIGHT

by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...

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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. 

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.

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

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | HOLOCAUST | HISTORY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL HISTORY

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS
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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

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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

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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