by Kathy Watson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 10, 2001
An absorbing account of courage, ambition, and early success—followed by a swift decline into desperation and tragedy.
A moving pop biography of the first man to swim the English Channel, by former BBC radio producer Watson.
At 26, Captain Matthew Webb (1848–83) achieved what had been thought to be impossible. His 21-hour swim across the English Channel instantly earned him the status of a national hero, hailed by the press as “half man half fish.” Dazzled by his newfound celebrity, Webb resigned his commission with the Merchant Navy (where he had served with distinction since he was 12) and tried to earn his living as a professional swimmer. The monotonous spectacle of long-distance swimming, however, would not draw a crowd for long. His ensuing challenges—which he claimed were in the interest of advancing the sport of swimming—never matched the popularity of his channel crossing and became increasingly humiliating as Webb sought in vain to outdo himself. In America, he lost a race to his archrival Paul Boyton, who had crossed the channel two months before him in a bizarre life-preserving suit that allowed its wearer to fire warning flares and smoke cigars while rowing to safety. Eventually Webb returned to England, dropped the pretense of advancing the sport, and freely admitted that he was swimming only for money. His later feats (such as a river race in near-freezing water and a 60-hour swim in an aquarium) came to resemble freak shows, and they drew few spectators and little money. Webb reached the sad culmination of his career in the Niagara River, where he died during an insane attempt to swim the rapids above the falls. He left a wife and child behind.
An absorbing account of courage, ambition, and early success—followed by a swift decline into desperation and tragedy.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2001
ISBN: 1-58542-109-X
Page Count: 256
Publisher: TarcherPerigee
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2001
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by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 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
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by Jon Krakauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1996
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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