An impassioned, non-manipulative memorial, timed to coincide with the fourth anniversary of 9/11.
Fontana tugs at the heartstrings in this engrossing, inspiring 9/11 memoir.
The author married firefighter Dave Fontana on September 11, 1993, and they were supposed to spend their eighth wedding anniversary toddling hand-in-hand through the Whitney Museum. But Dave never made it home that day; he died at Ground Zero. Marian mourned, gave countless interviews to reporters, planned Dave’s wake, wrote his eulogy and conferred with other widows. Gradually, she became a skilled political organizer, founding the 9-11 Widows’ and Victims’ Families Association. She used her newfound media cachet to educate people about the lousy wages firefighters are paid and to weigh in on the debates surrounding compensation to victims’ families. She met with mayors and senators, and she now serves on the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation’s Family Advisory Committee. Fontana is a good writer, with an ear for phrasing and a focus on small, poignant details: We see her plucking strands of salt-and-pepper hair from Dave’s hairbrush, because she needs a sample of his DNA and brushing her teeth with his toothbrush, “secretly pretend[ing] I was being kissed.”
An impassioned, non-manipulative memorial, timed to coincide with the fourth anniversary of 9/11.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-7432-4624-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2005
A warm, surprisingly entertaining glimpse of fundamentalism through a child's eyes.
Memories of a childhood spent in a Christian classroom in 1970s Florida.
The author's parents weren't the world's most devout couple, but when it came time to send their girls to school, they settled on the Keswick Christian School rather than the local public school, which was in a notoriously dodgy neighborhood. Thus was Rosen (Preaching Eugenics, 2004, etc.) introduced to the intensely Bible-centric world of Christian education. In some ways, Bible stories were instantly understandable; the ten plagues (frogs, lice, flies, etc.), for example, were almost all experienced in some way or other in her hometown of St. Petersburg. In kindergarten, class time was devoted to memorizing Bible verses; by second grade, the students were ready for a “Walk Thru the Bible” seminar, in which every major biblical event was recited. The author, though affectionate towards her alma mater, is also clearly amused by a certain earnest wackiness that suffused the school, exemplified by an “odd mix of Bible lesson and performance art.” The same attitude, tinged with a bit of sorrow or confusion, is extended to Rosen's mother. The author's parents divorced early in her childhood, Rosen and her sister both staying with their father (and, eventually, a loving stepmother), while their mother began making the rounds of a series of different jobs and churches, favoring those that focused on faith healing and speaking in tongues—practices frowned upon by the more conservative Keswick school community. Rosen remained at Keswick through eighth grade, but when the school banned students from patronizing the 7-11 because it sold pornography, Rosen’s parents began to realize how widely their philosophy differed from that of Keswick; the author's fundamentalist education ended after middle school.
A warm, surprisingly entertaining glimpse of fundamentalism through a child's eyes.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2006
ISBN: 1-58648-258-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2005
The melodramatic true story of a mythic grand horizontal, told with clarity and understanding.
Versatile biographer Shipman (To the Heart of the Nile, 2004, etc.) explores the life of an ineffectual undercover agent who was considerably more adept under the bedcovers.
Born in Holland in 1876, Margaretha Zelle had a teenaged escapade with her schoolmaster that made it urgently necessary to escape home and her disagreeable family. Answering an advertisement, the girl who was to be Mata Hari wed extravagantly mustachioed Captain MacLeod, stationed in the fetid Dutch East Indies. Her squalid colonial life led to motherhood and divorce; she resurfaced (without her daughter) in 1903 in Paris, where she resorted to prostitution to pay the bills until she began to make a sensation as Mata Hari, an exotic, erotic, scantily clad dancer. “[People] like to see much of a pretty woman,” she remarked. “I have never been afraid to catch a cold.” As the Great War raged, she received favors and gifts, including cash, from battalions of lovers; she was especially partial to officers of various armies. The British suspected her of being a German agent—more because she was wealthy and sexually independent, Shipman suggests, than because of anything she’d done. Given these suspicions, however, it was odd that a French intelligence officer would recruit her as a mole in the summer of 1916. Undeniably clever, Mata Hari was a dreadfully inept spy, soon branded as a double agent. Though a German lover may have rewarded her for services rendered, the author argues, Germany did not pay her to spy. But the war was going badly for France in the winter of 1916-7, and it was convenient to blame traitors. A kangaroo court condemned Mata Hari based on documents that were probably altered by her French intelligence contact, who may have been a German spy himself. The vain, formidable woman whose casual way with the truth played a role in her undoing was shot on October 15, 1917.
The melodramatic true story of a mythic grand horizontal, told with clarity and understanding.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-06-081728-2
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2007
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