A dense journey through an ocean of iron and blood best suited for gun enthusiasts.
The first biography since the 1950s of the famed—and in some circles, infamous—gun-maker.
Gorenstein delivers a technically detailed life of John Moses Browning (1855-1926), a second-generation member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and second-generation gun manufacturer who found pleasure in inventing weapons. As a young boy, he built a working shotgun in his father’s shop, and he began sketching out plans for more advanced weapons. Years later, he noted, “a good idea starts a celebration of the mind, and every nerve in the body seems to crowd up to see the fireworks.” There were fireworks aplenty, as Browning developed repeating rifles, pump shotguns, and other armaments, licensing his patents to all the major manufacturers—Remington, Colt, Winchester, and so forth—and creating new designs by trial and error. Gorenstein takes a cataloger’s tone as he describes each new prototype and design. Of one early gas machine gun, he writes, “At forty-one inches long and a relatively modest thirty-five pounds, it had to be mounted on a tripod but remained far more portable than a hand-cranked Gatling gun, and it gave Colt a chance to compete in a market dominated by the Maxim gun.” The result is a text gun collectors and historians of armaments will cherish, though nonspecialists may get bogged down in such technical matters as the composition of a “locked breech system” for high-pressure weapons like Browning’s .45 pistol and automatic rifle. Gorenstein clearly demonstrates how most of the world’s guns, from the AK-47 to the latest Sig Sauer pistols, draw on Browning’s designs of more than a century ago, and he tallies many of the known assets of Browning’s estate and those of his heirs. However, he avoids reckoning with the human costs. “If there were going to be wars, there had to be guns,” he writes, “and Browning was going to give his country the best.”
A dense journey through an ocean of iron and blood best suited for gun enthusiasts.Pub Date: May 25, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-982129-21-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: March 8, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
The heartbreaking story of an emotionally battered child delivered with captivating candor and grace.
The former iCarly star reflects on her difficult childhood.
In her debut memoir, titled after her 2020 one-woman show, singer and actor McCurdy (b. 1992) reveals the raw details of what she describes as years of emotional abuse at the hands of her demanding, emotionally unstable stage mom, Debra. Born in Los Angeles, the author, along with three older brothers, grew up in a home controlled by her mother. When McCurdy was 3, her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. Though she initially survived, the disease’s recurrence would ultimately take her life when the author was 21. McCurdy candidly reconstructs those in-between years, showing how “my mom emotionally, mentally, and physically abused me in ways that will forever impact me.” Insistent on molding her only daughter into “Mommy’s little actress,” Debra shuffled her to auditions beginning at age 6. As she matured and starting booking acting gigs, McCurdy remained “desperate to impress Mom,” while Debra became increasingly obsessive about her daughter’s physical appearance. She tinted her daughter’s eyelashes, whitened her teeth, enforced a tightly monitored regimen of “calorie restriction,” and performed regular genital exams on her as a teenager. Eventually, the author grew understandably resentful and tried to distance herself from her mother. As a young celebrity, however, McCurdy became vulnerable to eating disorders, alcohol addiction, self-loathing, and unstable relationships. Throughout the book, she honestly portrays Debra’s cruel perfectionist personality and abusive behavior patterns, showing a woman who could get enraged by everything from crooked eyeliner to spilled milk. At the same time, McCurdy exhibits compassion for her deeply flawed mother. Late in the book, she shares a crushing secret her father revealed to her as an adult. While McCurdy didn’t emerge from her childhood unscathed, she’s managed to spin her harrowing experience into a sold-out stage act and achieve a form of catharsis that puts her mind, body, and acting career at peace.
The heartbreaking story of an emotionally battered child delivered with captivating candor and grace.Pub Date: Aug. 9, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-982185-82-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2022
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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
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