As candid and earnest as we can hope for from a polished TV personality, Kelly’s memoir delivers on decency and...
The TV news star delivers a relatable, sometimes-inspiring memoir with a dash of vulnerability.
Kelly, a Fox News darling who garners respect on both sides of the aisle for her hard-hitting, tough-but-fair style of journalism, is a self-described “overpreparer.” It’s the reason her guests can both love and hate her and what made her a successful lawyer for nearly a decade. It also makes her memoir, filled with journal entries and vividly recalled anecdotes, shine with authenticity. The author begins her story on the day of the Republican presidential debate, which started with a bad stomach bug and would only get more challenging for her—professionally and personally—as her question to Donald Trump on his attitude toward women would make her a target of the future president-elect for months to come. Suddenly, she was both a media star and the media’s favorite subject. However, as we learn, life had prepared her for what would become her “Year of Trump.” She’d dealt with unfair breaks before, such as the early death of her beloved father; she is no stranger to being bullied; she has learned how to regain a sense of security even while being stalked; and her faith in the power of hard work and “doing better” has never let her down. Throughout her story of an average girl who worked hard, took chances, and became a star, Kelly makes a compelling case for the independent status she claims. With equal helpings of criticism and praise for both ends of the political spectrum, it becomes clear that Kelly isn’t devoted to a particular party dogma but rather to herself, her family, and her values.
As candid and earnest as we can hope for from a polished TV personality, Kelly’s memoir delivers on decency and encouragement.Pub Date: Nov. 15, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-249460-3
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 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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