A shimmering, occasionally breathless report that should fill in many of the cracks in readers’ knowledge of pop-music...
A spirited jump down the rabbit hole to the early years of what would become the Beatles, from TV news anchor and Beatles chronicler Kane (Lennon Revealed, 2005, etc.).
The author details the many characters and moments in time that shaped the Beatles into the band that rocketed onto American shores in 1964. Despite being occasionally starry-eyed and corny, Kane writes with an evocative clarity, attention to detail and familiarity. He transports readers back to 1950s Liverpool and turn-of-the-decade Hamburg, to the childhood homes of the Fab Four as well as original drummer Pete Best and original bassist Stuart Sutcliffe. Kane reminds us that the Quarrymen, the Silver Beetles, the Silver Beatles and the early Beatles were a dance band: Fans went to a concert to move, to dance, and at that, the Beatles excelled long before all the screaming. But it was a serious grind to get to the point where they were finally filling clubs, and their first visit to Hamburg in 1960 was one of those near-turning points, when the grind had ground them down, the living conditions vile—they slept for months next to the toilet (John, after popping one speed pill over the line: “I would be wide awake staring around, wondering if the dirt would cake up inside me”)—the payback not worth the effort. The Beatles almost dissolved before they had a chance to change the course of popular music. Kane takes special care to get the characters right, whether they are remembered or forgotten, fleshing them out without bogging down the story. Indeed, one of the pleasures of this book is its brightness, written not just for the converted, but for anyone who has even a vague interest in this slice of history.
A shimmering, occasionally breathless report that should fill in many of the cracks in readers’ knowledge of pop-music history.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-7624-4014-6
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Running Press
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2013
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
An engrossing, intense, and highly descriptive narrative chronicling the ghastly conditions three pregnant women suffered...
The incredible true story of three Jewish women who survived the Holocaust.
Priska, Rachel, and Anka were married Jewish women in their early 20s when the Nazis took control of Europe. Like millions of other Jews, they were forced to give up their normal lives, all of their belongings, and their homes. Shuttled into ghettos and then off to one of the most notorious camps, Auschwitz II-Birkenau, they suffered through the Nazis’ increasing atrocities. But these three women all held a secret: they were pregnant. They were moved from Auschwitz and ended up in Mauthausen, another notorious death camp. With facing the most horrible conditions imaginable, all three gave birth right before the Allies accepted Germany’s surrender. In this meticulously detailed account, Holden (Haatchi & Little B: The Inspiring True Story of One Boy and His Dog, 2014, etc.) compiles an enormous amount of information from interviews, letters, historical records, and personal visits to the sites where this story unfolded. The graphic history places readers in the moment and provides a sense of the enduring power of love that Priska, Rachel, and Anka had for their unborn children and for the husbands they so desperately hoped to see after the war. Even though it occurred more than 70 years ago, the story’s truth is so chillingly portrayed that it seems as if it could have happened recently. These three women and their infants survived in the face of death, and, Holden writes, “their babies went on to have babies of their own and create a second and then a third generation, all of whom continue to live their lives in defiance of Hitler’s plan to erase them from history and from memory.”
An engrossing, intense, and highly descriptive narrative chronicling the ghastly conditions three pregnant women suffered through at the hands of the Nazis.Pub Date: May 5, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-237025-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2015
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