Though the anecdotes are unconnected, they are unfailingly entertaining.
A leading dealer in historical documents and artifacts delivers a delightful account of his business.
Raab, who writes the “Historically Speaking” column for Forbes.com, begins with an account of his education under the guidance of a father whose fascination with antiquities persuaded him to give up a prosperous legal career. “I had found my way to the emotional yet intangible heart of this trade in history,” he writes. “I came to understand what binds people to the physical traces of our history and its great men and women, why these artifacts and pieces of paper have such power. This isn’t an easy lesson, and no one can teach it to you. You have to learn it yourself.” The author emphasizes that it’s not a career for the faint of heart, requiring a scholar’s knowledge of history, a keen nose for fakes (a thriving industry), genuine-but-not-priceless items (many famous people’s letters were signed and often written by a secretary), and a sense of what will sell to collectors. A Benjamin Franklin letter discussing the Constitution brings a king’s ransom; another apologizing for arriving late for a meeting would attract far less interest. As skilled in satisfying readers as clients, Raab knows how to tell a story, chronicling how descendants of great historical figures invite him to their homes and reveal treasures. A survey report signed by the young George Washington looked like a bonanza until Raab’s research turned up another, identical including the corrections—and then another. An undistinguished collection of John F. Kennedy memorabilia included a tape of lost recordings from the plane carrying Kennedy’s body to Washington, D.C., after his assassination. In that case, the author’s joy was cut short when a government lawyer called him to demand it. The book also contains plenty of sad tales about certain family heirlooms, preserved for generations, that turned out to be reproductions.
Though the anecdotes are unconnected, they are unfailingly entertaining.Pub Date: March 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5011-9890-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Nov. 10, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
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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