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MAGNIFICO

THE BRILLIANT LIFE AND VIOLENT TIMES OF LORENZO DE’ MEDICI

A welcome addition to the body of Medici literature.

An affectionate portrayal of the Renaissance statesman with a penchant for art and poetry.

New York Times contributor Unger (The Watercolors of Winslow Homer, 2001) lays out Lorenzo de’ Medici’s achievements in this well-balanced tome. Lorenzo’s birth in 1449 created the potential for a dynasty. His grandfather Cosimo ruled over Florence, his father Piero was Cosimo’s eldest son and Lorenzo was the first male Medici born since the family seized power in 1434. Unger describes the young Lorenzo as overawed by his grandfather’s reputation and worshipful of his grandmother, Contessina de’ Bardi. After Cosimo’s death in 1464, Piero put great responsibility on 15-year-old Lorenzo’s shoulders; indeed, the boy was referred to as “the hope of the city” by many Medici partisans. Unger draws on letters sent to and from the Medici family to enrich his tale and also includes extracts from Lorenzo’s poetry, the exegeses of which are among the book’s most illuminating passages. Lorenzo shared his grandparents’ and parents’ affinity for all the arts. He used his associations with such Renaissance figures as Botticelli and Michelangelo to impress European leaders, and these artists in turn received the Medici family’s generous patronage. Lorenzo’s fondness for poetry, art and literature should not be underestimated, asserts the author, a stance that differs from recent scholars who have contended that his influence over Florentine artists may not have been so great as is often assumed. Many of these arguments, writes Unger, such as whether Lorenzo commissioned Botticelli’s Primavera, are mere quibbles when set against the creative atmosphere that the great statesman fostered. Further extracts from poetry written toward the end of Lorenzo’s life, which detail his fragile state of mind, bring the book to a neat conclusion.

A welcome addition to the body of Medici literature.

Pub Date: May 1, 2008

ISBN: 978-0-7432-5434-2

Page Count: 496

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2008

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

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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INTO THE WILD

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.

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor will it to readers of Krakauer's narrative. (4 maps) (First printing of 35,000; author tour)

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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