Gruesome and completely fascinating, but requires translation.
A gripping tale of four sailors adrift at sea—and the cabin boy eaten to sustain the remaining three—by British journalist Hanson.
The tale begins with Captain Tom Dudley, an honest upfromthe ranks sailor, being hired to sail the Mignonette, an old and small yacht, from England to New South Wales in 1884. After hiring three other crew members, including an inexperienced cabin boy, Dudley and his men set sail from England, are suddenly overwhelmed by a tremendous storm, and lose the ship with only minutes to get into their lifeboat. After more than 20 days adrift, the men discuss drawing lots to decide if one will be killed to sustain the others (the ``custom of the sea''), but then decide not to go ahead. Several days later, the cabin boy slips into unconsciousness and the others decide to forego drawing straws and kill him. Days later, the men are rescued and returned to England where they freely tell of their ordeal and the killing. Dudley (who performed the killing) is brought up on charges of murder and becomes a hallmark legal case. Hanson’s description of the voyage, his reconstruction of the men’s conversations both onboard ship and in the lifeboat, and the manner in which he weaves in maritime social history (and such other diverse topics as marine construction, navigation, medicine, and anatomy) are skilled and offer a compelling look at the life of sailors in the latter half of the 19th century, but in the chapters following the death of the cabin boy and the men’s rescue, the book becomes mired in the obscurities of the English legal system. Although the courtroom scenes in the book provide gripping drama, they read as if there has been little attempt made to make it palatable to an American audience.
Gruesome and completely fascinating, but requires translation.Pub Date: April 14, 2000
ISBN: 0-471-38389-9
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Wiley
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2000
Not only the definitive life, but a tour de force by a master.
One of history’s most prolific inventors receives his due from one of the world’s greatest biographers.
Pulitzer and National Book Award winner Morris (This Living Hand and Other Essays, 2012, etc.), who died this year, agrees that Thomas Edison (1847-1931) almost certainly said, “genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration,” and few readers of this outstanding biography will doubt that he was the quintessential workaholic. Raised in a middle-class Michigan family, Edison displayed an obsessive entrepreneurial spirit from childhood. As an adolescent, he ran a thriving business selling food and newspapers on a local railroad. Learning Morse code, he spent the Civil War as a telegrapher, impressing colleagues with his speed and superiors with his ability to improve the equipment. In 1870, he opened his own shop to produce inventions to order. By 1876, he had money to build a large laboratory in New Jersey, possibly the world’s first industrial research facility. Never a loner, Edison hired talented people to assist him. The dazzling results included the first commercially successful light bulb for which, Morris reminds readers, he invented the entire system: dynamo, wires, transformers, connections, and switches. Critics proclaim that Edison’s innovations (motion pictures, fluoroscope, rechargeable batteries, mimeograph, etc.) were merely improvements on others’ work, but this is mostly a matter of sour grapes. Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone was a clunky, short-range device until it added Edison’s carbon microphone. And his phonograph flabbergasted everyone. Humans had been making images long before Daguerre, but no one had ever reproduced sound. Morris rivetingly describes the personalities, business details, and practical uses of Edison’s inventions as well as the massive technical details of years of research and trial and error for both his triumphs and his failures. For no obvious reason, the author writes in reverse chronological order, beginning in 1920, with each of the seven following chapters backtracking a decade. It may not satisfy all readers, but it works.
Not only the definitive life, but a tour de force by a master.Pub Date: Oct. 22, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9311-0
Page Count: 800
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2019
A book that describes what kangaroos do and offers unusually beautiful pictures of them doing it. One old male bending forward while scratching his back looks like nothing else found in nature- -except maybe a curmudgeonly old baseball manager with arthritis in the late innings of another losing game (in fact, baseball players would appear to be the only animals who scratch themselves as much as kangaroos do—bellies, underarms, Iwago captures every permutation of scratching). At other times, they look preternaturally graceful and serene. Some of Iwago's (Mitsuaki Iwago's Whales, not reviewed) photographic compositions flirt with anthropomorphism and slyly play to our urge to see ourselves in the animals. But kangaroos are so singular that there's always something about the cant of a head or the drape of a limb that makes you think you flatter yourself that there is any kinship. They remain wondrously different.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-8118-0785-1
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1994
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