Though he removes much of the romance from the idea of opening a wine store, Pasanella’s clear-eyed memoir is a joy to read...
An absorbing look at establishing and managing a wine shop through many difficulties, including the financial downturn.
Pasanella (Living in Style without Losing Your Mind, 2000) chronicles his adventures owning and operating a wine shop in a historic New York City waterfront building. His goal was to create a store that was “informed, but relaxed,” and his memoir showcases the same characteristics. Full of informative tidbits about wine, it never comes across as pretentious; the book is completely accessible to those new to the vast world of wine, yet entertains equally well for the seasoned expert. Pasanella also reveals the inner workings of a wine shop, complete with eccentric wine reps and the politics of distribution. He focuses on every aspect of running his store, from run-ins with the State Liquor Authority to more mundane yet equally interesting elements of any small business, such as dealing with a difficult employee. Eventually Pasanella was able to rise above the everyday aspects of his business and embark on an entirely new venture: selling his own, store-brand wine. This adds another layer to the engaging, lucid narrative. The author wanders off on the occasional tangent, but most of the asides are worthwhile, and Pasanella quickly pulls the story back to the main thread, his wine-selling adventures. The recipes interspersed throughout the book, while appetizing, mostly serve to interrupt an otherwise delightful reading experience.
Though he removes much of the romance from the idea of opening a wine store, Pasanella’s clear-eyed memoir is a joy to read from beginning to end.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-307-71984-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Clarkson Potter
Review Posted Online: March 15, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2012
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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