by Minion K.C. Morrison ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 5, 2015
A sometimes slow-moving but mostly enlightening book about a fearless man that readers should know better.
Morrison (Political Science and Public Administration/Mississippi State Univ.; African Americans and Political Participation: A Reference Handbook, 2003) brings our belated attention to Aaron Henry (1922-1997), a man of immense talent devoted to establishing an integrated society.
The author recounts Henry’s remarkable achievements, which could easily fill volumes. Born in the Mississippi Delta, he was raised learning the methods that would enable him to change the world as he knew it. Like so many others, Henry returned from service in the Army expecting certain rights. Upset with the continuing spread of prejudice and discrimination, he opened a pharmacy in Clarksdale, Mississippi, and commenced to work for social change. He set his sights first on enfranchising Negro voters, joined the NAACP, and perfected his networking and speaking skills. Soon, he developed a successful partnership with Medgar Evers, and he and Evers successfully pushed beyond the framework of the slow-moving NAACP parent organization. The author gives only minor insights into the man and his family, sticking to his many and varied accomplishments. Occasionally, the narrative gets bogged down in his professorial style and attempt to include everything. Henry organized multiple social movements in Clarksdale, sit-ins at railway and bus stations, a boycott of Clarksdale shops that lasted for years, and protests against all segregated establishments, including churches. He also participated in the Freedom Vote Campaign. With the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the War on Poverty, and Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, Henry really blossomed. His entrepreneurial abilities, political acumen, and close connections helped secure funding for countless projects in his home state. His ability to compromise turned some against his leadership, but his successes vastly outweighed his failures. Henry not only changed the racial climate in Mississippi; he challenged the entire infrastructure.
A sometimes slow-moving but mostly enlightening book about a fearless man that readers should know better.Pub Date: June 5, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-55728-759-5
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Univ. of Arkansas
Review Posted Online: March 4, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2015
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by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006
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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by Jon Krakauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1996
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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