Emerson gives readers a marvelous social and historical context in which to consider 19th-century America's most popular songwriter. Race is the primary issue of Doo-Dah!, and Emerson (a former editor of the New York Times Magazine) does not shy away from stating plainly that as a young man Foster was a proslavery racist who wrote minstrel songs in a grotesque approximation of black English. However, Emerson points out, Foster ``was among the first white boys to do what white boys . . . have been doing ever since- -mimicking black music, or what they think is black music and black style.'' As a result of living in Pittsburgh—a main hub on the Underground Railroad—and being exposed to the ideas of people like militant abolitionist and first black US Army major Martin Delany and Harriet Beecher Stowe, Foster became able to consider blacks as human beings and not simply the butt of jokes. Emerson admits, ``There's no evidence that . . . Foster actually encountered Delany,'' but there is no question that the abolitionist's presence was felt all over the nation, and his presence in this book serves as a strong historical marker. Similarly, repeated references to the British Romantic poets and to Victorian novelists, like minstrelsy fan Charles Dickens, serve as the cultural backdrop for Foster's synthesis of European and African-American styles. Foster became a begrudging Unionist during the Civil War, though his problems with alcohol often caused him to lapse into his old racist ways, and he died at age 37, in New York City, a literal Bowery bum. This is perhaps the only way in which Foster's career matches that of Elvis Presley or Kurt Cobain, who are among the 20th- century musicians to whom Emerson compares Foster. But this is the only serious fault in an otherwise fine work of cultural history. (8 pages b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: May 7, 1997
ISBN: 0-684-81010-7
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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