A disappointing account of the illegitimate child conceived by Albert Einstein and his first wife, Mileva Mari—, a daughter who disappeared from all records until the publication of her parents’ early love letters in 1986. In 1902, Mari—, not yet married to Einstein, gave birth to a daughter behind closed doors at her parents’ home in the Vojvodina (then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire). By the following year, all traces of the child had disappeared. Zackheim (Violette’s Embrace, 1996) set out to solve the mystery of Einstein’s “lost” daughter. In her view, the child, named Lieserl, was born with severe mental handicaps. For this reason, Mari— decided to leave the child with her parents rather then return with her to Bern. When Lieserl died of scarlet fever less than two years after her birth, the family covered up all traces of her existence and kept secret this painful chapter in their history. Zackheim has clearly poured herself into this project. She has searched archives, read books and articles, interviewed relatives and friends of Einstein and Mari——plus potential surviving Lieserls—and spent several years in Serbia in search of the lost child. The question she leaves unanswered is: Why should anyone share the author’s obvious passion for this mystery? What does it reveal to us that is new or noteworthy about Einstein or Mari—? If Zackheim has not succeeded in persuading her audience of the importance of her topic in the broader scope of Einstein scholarship, it is because her book imprudently tells more about Mileva Mari— than her husband. In addition, Zackheim has delved so deeply into Serbian folklore, customs, and traditions that she foists them on her subject. Readers do not benefit from Serbian sayings and words that repeatedly appear in mid-sentence in both Serbian and English. Nor does Zackheim present convincing evidence that Mari— herself was closely bound to the Serbian customs she so lovingly details. In this misguided account of the child’s story, Zackheim, playing sleuth, dwells on the details but leaves a void at the heart of the drama.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1999
ISBN: 1-57322-127-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1999
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
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
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