by Kyle Garlett ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 2011
Freelance sportswriter and motivational speaker Garlett (What Were They Thinking?: The Brainless Blunders that Changed Sports History, 2009, etc.) writes with humor and brutal honesty about his 17-year battle to defeat cancer.
In 1989, Garlett was expecting his senior year in high school to be a ball; when he noticed two lumps in his neck, he wasn't unduly alarmed. A biopsy revealed Hodgkin's lymphoma, but the doctor reassured him that it could be cured. He finished the school year and went on to college, functioning despite the debilitating effects of radiation treatment, but his first year in college was a disaster. He spent his time partying and barely squeaked by academically. Then the Hodgkin's returned and this time he faced six cycles of disabling chemotherapy. After another remission, he buckled down in college and established a career as a sportswriter after graduation. His remission lasted only until 1995; this time, his odds of surviving were reduced to 40 percent. His treatment was so severe that he was on the point of death several times and required a bone-marrow transplant. After finally defeating the Hodgkin’s, two years later he faced leukemia and three more years of treatment. Describing his experiences with wry humor, he chronicles how he managed to keep working, met and married his wife and worked to rebuild his strength. Not content to define himself with just being a survivor, he welcomed new challenges. After recovering from a heart transplant (necessitated by the effects of chemotherapy), he competed in the grueling Ironman Triathlon. A compassionate celebration of the human spirit that doesn't gloss over tough realities.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-61374-005-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 10, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2011
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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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