by Luke Waters ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 12, 2016
Amusing recollections of “The Job” with some insider details, but it’s unlikely to stand out among a recent flood of law...
The memoir of an Irish-American's service with the New York Police Department, told with equal parts Gaelic charm and cop cynicism.
Dublin-bred Waters, who returned to Ireland following his 2011 retirement, details his swift rise through the ranks, from patrolling a boring Manhattan precinct to working major drug and gang investigations in the high-crime South Bronx, even as his comrades were bemused by New York’s legendary drop in violent crime. As he writes in comparing his brother officers to the wily professional criminals they pursue, “it’s about the game, the chase…[and] the cash hidden in some bus station locker or locked away in a pension plan at the end of your career.” Waters is surprisingly frank about the seamier side of big-city policing, starting with his own years as an illegal immigrant, about which he deceived the department. He portrays drug enforcement as a high-stakes scheme for accruing officer overtime and federal dollars, and he admits that Irish ancestry still aids one’s rise within the department. He avers that “although I made plenty of mistakes, I never took a dime I wasn’t entitled to, never set a perp up for a crime he did not commit,” and he expresses scorn for the few truly crooked cops he encountered. Waters details intriguing street scenes from his time in an anti-pickpocketing unit, followed by postings in Narcotics and Homicide, but the most powerful section concerns his experiences at ground zero following 9/11 (even detectives were assigned to sift remains). The author has the droll voice of a raconteur, but the casually organized narrative can seem unfocused. He discusses some major investigations, but Waters focuses more on his own career trajectory, up until its abrupt conclusion after more than 20 years: “There are a lot of fantasies when you join the NYPD, but few fanfares when you exit the stage.”
Amusing recollections of “The Job” with some insider details, but it’s unlikely to stand out among a recent flood of law enforcement memoirs.Pub Date: Jan. 12, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5011-1901-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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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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