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
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
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
SEEN & HEARD
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