A worthy tribute to an inexhaustible humanitarian.
New York Daily News columnist Daly (Under Ground, 1995, etc.), a Pulitzer-Prize finalist for his 9/11 coverage, plumbs the life of the beloved former chaplain of the New York City Fire Department.
Born Robert Emmet Judge to Irish immigrants in Brooklyn, N.Y., Judge had always dreamed of becoming a priest. After the death of his father, he and his sisters (one, his twin) were left in the callous care of his stringent, “fierce” mother Mary Ann and the corporally sadistic teachers at the Catholic school. Ever determined, Judge graduated from life as an altar boy to the Franciscan Friars in his mid-teens. Though living within the celibate, all-male environment bolstered his burgeoning homosexual feelings, Judge quickly progressed to an ordainment of priesthood, a name change and assignments at churches in New Jersey. He began enriching the lives of parishioners and commoners alike with his gracious demeanor and gentle approach. His struggles were few but significant: A battle with alcoholism resulted in subsequent recovery in Alcoholics Anonymous, and differences with a few conventional priests caused problems. Known for his all-encompassing “omnisexuality,” Judge found his calling in HIV advocacy with the development of an AIDS ministry and eventually as chaplain for the FDNY, a physically and emotionally draining post. Though an illicit ongoing nonsexual love affair between Judge and a much-younger Filipino nurse spices up the text, Daly’s professional tact never falters. Judge’s life of tireless pastoral work ceased when the South Tower of the World Trade Center collapsed, ending his life at age 68. He was the first recorded casualty of 9/11. Using letters, journal entries and commentary from friends and family, Daly imbues his deft, comprehensive tribute with compassion and grace.
A worthy tribute to an inexhaustible humanitarian.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-312-30150-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2008
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
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
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