An engrossing, delightful descent into a life of books.
Colt (Defend The Valley, 1994) tells the story of a Manhattan-based mom-and-pop military bookstore in this memoir.
In September 1975, after Harris Colt learned that his small brokerage firm was shuttering, he said to his wife, Margaretta, “It’s time for the bookstore.” Although she had no idea what he was talking about, she was soon helping her husband realize his lifelong dream: to open a rare and out-of-print bookshop specializing in military history. Despite the risks of renting a storefront in Manhattan, including its proximity to dangerous neighborhoods and the fact that American interest in anything military was at a low ebb, the Military Bookman opened shop at 170 E. 92nd St. the next summer. This is Margaretta’s account of a quarter-century of selling books; of becoming an expert in the many histories, accounts, manuals, memoirs, and ephemera that make up the military market; and of learning to wrangle the obsessive collectors who seek them out. It chronicles the shifting landscape of Manhattan in the last decades of the 20th century and the changing tastes of the American public regarding warfare (always reflective of the politics of the time). Most of all, it’s the story of a couple who dedicated their lives and livelihoods to a small, peculiar field and the community that arose to embrace them. Colt is a surprisingly urgent and elegant writer, particularly when she gets into the minutiae of her merchandise: “One of my favorites was an anomaly, the rare depiction of Napoleonic battles by a Chinese artist, with a godlike view above the fray, almost aerial perspectives of tiny, ignorant armies on a not-too-darkling plain.” Expect no high human drama, though: although the characters are colorful, the books themselves are the focus of this memoir. For some, that may prove uninteresting after 50 pages, but never mind those people: this is a read for the reading-obsessed, for those who truly love the physicality, variety, and dynamism of the printed medium and for whom a day in the musty stacks of a darkened shop sounds like something close to paradise.
An engrossing, delightful descent into a life of books.Pub Date: June 17, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5088-4944-5
Page Count: 346
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Aug. 21, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A unique, incandescent memoir.
A lyrical, soul-stirring memoir about how an acclaimed Native American poet and musician came to embrace “the spirit of poetry.”
For Harjo, life did not begin at birth. She came into the world as an already-living spirit with the goal to release “the voices, songs, and stories” she carried with her from the “ancestor realm.” On Earth, she was the daughter of a half-Cherokee mother and a Creek father who made their home in Tulsa, Okla. Her father's alcoholism and volcanic temper eventually drove Harjo's mother and her children out of the family home. At first, the man who became the author’s stepfather “sang songs and smiled with his eyes,” but he soon revealed himself to be abusive and controlling. Harjo's primary way of escaping “the darkness that plagued the house and our family” was through drawing and music, two interests that allowed her to leave Oklahoma and pursue her high school education at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe. Interaction with her classmates enlightened her to the fact that modern Native American culture and history had been shaped by “colonization and dehumanization.” An education and raised consciousness, however, did not spare Harjo from the hardships of teen pregnancy, poverty and a failed first marriage, but hard work and luck gained her admittance to the University of New Mexico, where she met a man whose “poetry opened one of the doors in my heart that had been closed since childhood.” But his hard-drinking ways wrecked their marriage and nearly destroyed Harjo. Faced with the choice of submitting to despair or becoming “crazy brave,” she found the courage to reclaim a lost spirituality as well as the “intricate and metaphorical language of my ancestors.”
A unique, incandescent memoir.Pub Date: July 9, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-393-07346-1
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: April 29, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2012
SEEN & HEARD
At-times inspirational memoir about a journalist’s battle with a grave disease she had to face while also dealing with her...
With the assistance of Chambers (co-author; Yes, Chef, 2012, etc.), broadcaster Roberts (From the Heart: Eight Rules to Live By, 2008) chronicles her struggles with myelodysplastic syndrome, a rare condition that affects blood and bone marrow.
The author is a well-known newscaster, formerly on SportsCenter and now one of the anchors of Good Morning America. In 2007, she was diagnosed with breast cancer, which she successfully fought with surgery, chemotherapy and radiation treatment. Five years later, after returning from her news assignment covering the 2012 Academy Awards, she learned that chemotherapy had resulted in her developing MDS, which led to an acute form of leukemia. Without a bone marrow transplant, her projected life expectancy was two years. While Roberts searched for a compatible donor and prepared for the transplant, her aging mother’s health also began to gravely deteriorate. Roberts faced her misfortune with an athlete’s mentality, showing strength against both her disease and the loss of her mother. This is reflected in her narration, which rarely veers toward melodrama or self-pity. Even in the chapters describing the transplantion process and its immediate aftermath, which make for the most intimate parts of the book, Roberts maintains her positivity. However, despite the author’s best efforts to communicate the challenges of her experience and inspire empathy, readers are constantly reminded of her celebrity status and, as a result, are always kept at arm's length. The sections involving Roberts’ family partly counter this problem, since it is in these scenes that she becomes any daughter, any sister, any lover, struggling with a life-threatening disease. “[I]f there’s one thing that spending a year fighting for your life against a rare and insidious…disease will teach you,” she writes, “it’s that time is not to be wasted.”
At-times inspirational memoir about a journalist’s battle with a grave disease she had to face while also dealing with her mother’s passing.Pub Date: April 22, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4555-7845-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: March 17, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
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