by Katie Nicholl ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 9, 2010
Superficial and indulgent, the book still manages to promote the princes as possibly worthy future leaders.
In her debut, Daily Mail on Sunday royal correspondent Nicholl zooms in on House of Windsor Princes William and Harry.
Beginning with the birth of the elder William in 1982, the author covers all the major events of the princes’ lives up to the present. She mostly colors in their childhood with the idiosyncrasies of their mother, the late Diana: her quest to deviate from royal tradition, giving birth in a hospital and hiring young nannies, and her eschewing her sovereign kin, preferring to shop, watch soaps and gab on the telephone. The media’s chronicling of the unhappiness between Diana and Charles and Diana’s tragic demise comprise the drama of the princes’ formative years. The ability of classmates to follow their family saga compounded the princes’ suffering, especially William’s. Though their bodyguards sat at the back of the classroom or on the sidelines of the football field, the princes mostly fit in at school like anyone else. Nicholl describes William as the scholar and Harry as the prankster, but she extols them both as lushly romantic figures, mentioning numerous heiresses who caught their eye, including William and Harry’s relationships with long-term girlfriends, Kate Middleton and Chelsy Davy, respectively. Nicholl unearths little about key friendships, and the only mentors she names are father, Prince Charles, and grandparents, Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip. Adulthood brings boozing and clubbing amid harsh military training, since both princes joined the armed forces in hopes of reaching the front lines; Harry helped thwart two attacks in Afghanistan. With tabloid relish, Nicholl cuts from military feats to public blunders that incited obloquy: William flying a service jet to visit his girlfriend and Harry donning a Nazi costume at a birthday party. The author finishes on a high note, commending the princes’ public service and speculating on when William will propose to Middleton.
Superficial and indulgent, the book still manages to promote the princes as possibly worthy future leaders.Pub Date: Nov. 9, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-60286-140-4
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Weinstein Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2010
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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...
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
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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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