Those who can’t get enough of the details of Jackson’s death might relish this account, but those who prefer to appreciate...
A tabloid-style exploration of the death of Michael Jackson (1958-2009), particularly the role the singer’s personal physician may have played in his demise.
In their first book, screenwriter and director Richards and music manager Langthorne plod methodically and chronologically through Jackson’s life, pausing to zoom in on his final few days as well as the 83 minutes that passed between the time Jackson’s physician, Conrad Murray, allegedly discovered him unconscious and the time of his arrival at the hospital. The rehash of the singer’s life in the first half of the book treads familiar ground, dutifully recording how high Jackson’s records made it on the Billboard charts, detailing his intake of prescription painkillers, describing the lawsuits filed against the singer, and examining the minutiae of his contracts with his various producers. In the second half of the book, the authors rely heavily on court records from the trial of Murray on the charge of involuntary manslaughter, of which he was convicted. The picture that emerges of Jackson’s last days is sordid and depressing: Murray appears to have been incompetent and distracted, at best, while his patient comes across as “a frail, deeply insecure, vulnerable, unfit, 50-year-old with a chronic addiction to a wide variety of prescription medicines.” The authors raise the question of whether his producers at the time, AEG Live, may have somehow been involved in his death, but they back away from making any firm conclusions. The book’s bibliography is heavy on websites, and the extensive notes often contain material that could have been more gracefully added to the text. While the epigraphs from J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan that head each chapter suggest that the authors may have intended a psychological analysis of their subject, their emphasis is strictly on the facts.
Those who can’t get enough of the details of Jackson’s death might relish this account, but those who prefer to appreciate his music should look elsewhere.Pub Date: June 21, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-250-10892-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: April 29, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
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
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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