A celebratory and entertaining royal biography.
Early-life biography of the queen, who “in one sense…is the twentieth century.”
As CNN’s British royalty expert Williams (Ambition and Desire: The Dangerous Life of Josephine Bonaparte, 2014, etc.) acknowledges, Queen Elizabeth II has not lacked biographers. While breaking no new ground, the author’s lively, gossipy narrative offers a sympathetic portrait of a young woman whose path to the throne resulted from two unexpected events: the abdication of her uncle, Edward VIII, which made her father King George VI; and her father’s early death, which elevated 25-year-old Elizabeth to queen of England. As princesses, Elizabeth and her younger sister, Margaret, grew up sheltered, doted upon, and happily carefree. Their parents saw education as irrelevant for girls who were destined to do nothing more than marry well. Their governess was charged with tutoring them for an hour and a half per day. When Elizabeth was 10, however, her prospects changed. As royal watchers well know, Edward VIII, much preferring a glittery social whirl to the tedium of kingship, claimed that he could not rule without the support of the woman he loved, the twice-divorced American socialite Wallis Simpson. Like the royal family, Williams characterizes Edward and Wallis as spoiled, selfish, and irresponsible. Edward’s threat to abdicate was, Williams writes, “a bluffing game.” But the cabinet would not concede, he was forced to abdicate, and his brother was forced into a position for which he felt ill-prepared. As royal heiress, Elizabeth’s education somewhat intensified: she was sent to Eton twice a week to learn constitutional history. Socially, though, she remained sheltered (she did not leave her nursery bedroom until she turned 18), which Williams believes explains her intense romantic crush, at the age of 13, on debonair Prince Philip of Greece; they married when she turned 21. The author sees Elizabeth as exemplary: although “not born for the role,” she has fulfilled it “with grace and dignity.”
A celebratory and entertaining royal biography.Pub Date: Nov. 15, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-60598-891-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Pegasus
Review Posted Online: Aug. 8, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 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
SEEN & HEARD
© 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
