by Lois Beachy Underhill ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 1995
Former ad executive Underhill writes with a flair that perfectly suits the savory, savvy 19th-century feminist whose life speaks to our own sensational and self-styling era. Born humbly in Homer, Ohio, in an era when American culture assiduously constrained its womenfolk in codes of ``decency'' and ``purity,'' Victoria Claflin Woodhull (18381927) used her uncanny people skills, flamboyance, and visionary tendencies to ride the national craze for spiritualism in the 1850s. She rode it all the way from married misery in San Francisco to a lucrative life as a fortune-teller in New York City. Woodhull and her sister Tennessee then set their sights on becoming personal clairvoyants to the stars. By 1868, they had bewitched none other than Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt, the wealthiest robber baron in America, who would remain a font of financial support for the rest of their lives. With his backing, the two opened their own Wall Street brokerage house, Woodhull, Claflin & Company, and launched a newspaper, Woodhull & Claflin's Weekly (187076), making themselves public personages and earning a small fortune. The stock business, they said, would unveil ``the secrets of money that had heretofore been a male preserve.'' The sisters became known as the ``Bewitching Brokers''—their positive press no doubt a result of their frequent office soirees at which reporters were regular guests. Their visibility as female sensations and as muckraking editors enabled the ever-ambitious Woodhull to announce in 1870 her bid for the presidency of the United States. She set herself up as a suffrage lobbyist and over the coming months advocated women's suffrage and a range of radical positions, including ``free love''- -the call for a single sexual standard based on love—which Woodhull endorsed in both word and deed. Underhill's agile and incisive prose make this sprawling, wildly unconventional life fluid and convincing. (photos, not seen)
Pub Date: June 1, 1995
ISBN: 1-882593-10-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Bridge Works
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1995
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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 Richard Wright ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 28, 1945
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
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