What makes this already familiar account of drunkenness, infidelity, and remorse so startling is that it's by Mantle and members of his family. It also has some moving details of The Mick's courageous last days. With the aid of Herskowitz (The Quarterbacks, 1990), family members, including Mantle, recount, in alternating chapters, his life against the grim backdrop of their bouts with alcoholism. Mantle's contribution, written after he went to the Betty Ford Center in 1994 (as had his wife and three of their sons before him), discusses his career, his drinking, his marriage, and his regret at being, in his words, a lousy father. ``My view of the world,'' writes Mantle, ``was not much wider than the strike zone.'' He felt useless after retiring in 1969 from his illustrious career with the New York Yankees and was never comfortable with his fame. He became ``drinking buddies'' with his sons—a relationship he would regret as each of them slipped into a cycle of drunkenness and scrapes with the law. The most interesting recollections are those of Mantle's wife Merlyn, who recalls dating the young, handsome star, his enduring relationship with his beloved father, Mutt, and his innocent courtship of her (Mickey hadn't started drinking; they often went to soda fountains on their dates), and his glory years with the Yankees. Merlyn, David, and Danny each address the controversy surrounding Mantle's liver transplant, arguing that he did not receive special treatment because of his stature, that his condition was much worse than they'd revealed to the media. All agree that one beneficial effect of the publicity was that ``millions . . . were now aware of the organ donor program'' sponsored by the Mickey Mantle Foundation. A hard, sad tale, one which removes the varnish from an American legend and paints him in all-too-human colors. (16 pages photos) (Author tour)
Pub Date: Oct. 23, 1996
ISBN: 0-06-018363-2
Page Count: -
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1996
A standout immigrant coming-of-age story.
In her first nonfiction book, novelist Grande (Dancing with Butterflies, 2009, etc.) delves into her family’s cycle of separation and reunification.
Raised in poverty so severe that spaghetti reminded her of the tapeworms endemic to children in her Mexican hometown, the author is her family’s only college graduate and writer, whose honors include an American Book Award and International Latino Book Award. Though she was too young to remember her father when he entered the United States illegally seeking money to improve life for his family, she idolized him from afar. However, she also blamed him for taking away her mother after he sent for her when the author was not yet 5 years old. Though she emulated her sister, she ultimately answered to herself, and both siblings constantly sought affirmation of their parents’ love, whether they were present or not. When one caused disappointment, the siblings focused their hopes on the other. These contradictions prove to be the narrator’s hallmarks, as she consistently displays a fierce willingness to ask tough questions, accept startling answers, and candidly render emotional and physical violence. Even as a girl, Grande understood the redemptive power of language to define—in the U.S., her name’s literal translation, “big queen,” led to ridicule from other children—and to complicate. In spelling class, when a teacher used the sentence “my mamá loves me” (mi mamá me ama), Grande decided to “rearrange the words so that they formed a question: ¿Me ama mi mamá? Does my mama love me?”
A standout immigrant coming-of-age story.Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4516-6177-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: June 11, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Chronology, photographs and personal knowledge combine to make a memorable commemorative presentation.
Jackie Kennedy's secret service agent Hill and co-author McCubbin team up for a follow-up to Mrs. Kennedy and Me (2012) in this well-illustrated narrative of those five days 50 years ago when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated.
Since Hill was part of the secret service detail assigned to protect the president and his wife, his firsthand account of those days is unique. The chronological approach, beginning before the presidential party even left the nation's capital on Nov. 21, shows Kennedy promoting his “New Frontier” policy and how he was received by Texans in San Antonio, Houston and Fort Worth before his arrival in Dallas. A crowd of more than 8,000 greeted him in Houston, and thousands more waited until 11 p.m. to greet the president at his stop in Fort Worth. Photographs highlight the enthusiasm of those who came to the airports and the routes the motorcades followed on that first day. At the Houston Coliseum, Kennedy addressed the leaders who were building NASA for the planned moon landing he had initiated. Hostile ads and flyers circulated in Dallas, but the president and his wife stopped their motorcade to respond to schoolchildren who held up a banner asking the president to stop and shake their hands. Hill recounts how, after Lee Harvey Oswald fired his fatal shots, he jumped onto the back of the presidential limousine. He was present at Parkland Hospital, where the president was declared dead, and on the plane when Lyndon Johnson was sworn in. Hill also reports the funeral procession and the ceremony in Arlington National Cemetery. “[Kennedy] would have not wanted his legacy, fifty years later, to be a debate about the details of his death,” writes the author. “Rather, he would want people to focus on the values and ideals in which he so passionately believed.”
Chronology, photographs and personal knowledge combine to make a memorable commemorative presentation.Pub Date: Nov. 19, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4767-3149-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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