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MERCHANT ADVENTURER

THE STORY OF W. R. GRACE

A long-lost literary treasure with an absorbing tale of its own. In the course of a distinguished career, James (d. 1955)- -winner of two Pulitzers, for The Raven (1930) and Andrew Jackson (1938)—developed the lucrative sideline of producing corporate histories. Commissioned in 1944 to write the life story of William Russell Grace (founder of the multinational enterprise that still bears his name), James completed a manuscript that Viking was set to publish in 1948. For reasons still not entirely clear, the project was aborted and the galleys consigned to a warehouse. They were unearthed years later by Lawrence A. Clayton, a University of Alabama professor researching a scholarly history of W.R. Grace & Co. in Latin America. The finder arranged for the text's publication and here has contributed an informative introduction on the belated appearance of an altogether engrossing period piece. Drawing on unrestricted access to corporate archives and personal papers, James offers a detailed account of an immensely successful ÇmigrÇ. A son of Ireland's impoverished gentry, Grace (1832-1904) decided early on to make his way across the water. Having amassed a small fortune as a supplier to the sailing vessels that exported Peru's vast guano deposits, after the Civil War he moved his base of operations and family to Manhattan. There, Grace became even wealthier, building a mercantile empire whose far-flung interests ranged from railroads and rubber plantations through global shipping lines. He also found time for politics, bucking Tammany Hall to win election as the city's first Roman Catholic mayor. More merchant prince than robber baron, Grace earned considerable influence in the highest councils of the Democratic Party as an advocate of good government and reform. A lively chronicle, doubly welcome because it rescues from undeserved obscurity one of the Gilded Age's more consequential players—as well as a master annalist's handiwork.

Pub Date: Sept. 7, 1993

ISBN: 0-8420-2444-1

Page Count: 368

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1993

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NIGHT

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. 

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.

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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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

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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