A smart book of straight talk where laughter and logic meet.
An actor’s comedic exploration into America’s most gumption-exemplifying citizens.
Offerman (Paddle Your Own Canoe, 2013), best known as the hilarious Ron Swanson in Parks & Recreation, delivers 21 profiles of the men and women he admires most. “I am always hugely inspired (and personally relieved) to learn of the hard work that was required of any of my heroes before they could arrive at the level of mastery for which they ultimately garnered renown,” writes the author, an ethic reflected throughout his examples. From well-known historical figures (George Washington and James Madison) to more obscure men (boat builder Nat Benjamin, toolmaker Thomas Lie-Nielsen), Offerman smartly infuses history with humor, the result of which is an entertaining, educational reading experience. Though his tone may rile historians (“Young Theodore [Roosevelt] was, for lack of a better term, a wuss”), it’s a trespass easily forgivable for the comedic reward. Surprisingly, however, the author is at his best when he momentarily deviates from humor to reflect on society’s more serious problems. From partisanship to homophobia to the separation of church and state, Offerman utilizes his heroes as entry points to explore a range of subjects. The success of this tonal shift is exemplified in the chapter on writer and environmental activist Wendell Berry, a chapter that Offerman notes contains “less hyperbole than I would sophomorically like to apply to it.” Yet the risk pays off, proving to readers that the author is after much more than a chuckle, but concerted conversation as well. Though a bit bloated—the literary equivalent of Ron Swanson after a robust meal at Charles Mulligan's Steakhouse—Offerman’s book is nonetheless satisfying. His ability to vacillate between gruff history teacher and concerned citizen gives readers a reason to demonstrate their own gumption and follow him to the end.
A smart book of straight talk where laughter and logic meet.Pub Date: May 26, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-525-95467-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: March 31, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.
Rootin’-tootin’ history of the dry-gulchers, horn-swogglers, and outright killers who populated the Wild West’s wildest city in the late 19th century.
The stories of Wyatt Earp and company, the shootout at the O.K. Corral, and Geronimo and the Apache Wars are all well known. Clavin, who has written books on Dodge City and Wild Bill Hickok, delivers a solid narrative that usefully links significant events—making allies of white enemies, for instance, in facing down the Apache threat, rustling from Mexico, and other ethnically charged circumstances. The author is a touch revisionist, in the modern fashion, in noting that the Earps and Clantons weren’t as bloodthirsty as popular culture has made them out to be. For example, Wyatt and Bat Masterson “took the ‘peace’ in peace officer literally and knew that the way to tame the notorious town was not to outkill the bad guys but to intimidate them, sometimes with the help of a gun barrel to the skull.” Indeed, while some of the Clantons and some of the Earps died violently, most—Wyatt, Bat, Doc Holliday—died of cancer and other ailments, if only a few of old age. Clavin complicates the story by reminding readers that the Earps weren’t really the law in Tombstone and sometimes fell on the other side of the line and that the ordinary citizens of Tombstone and other famed Western venues valued order and peace and weren’t particularly keen on gunfighters and their mischief. Still, updating the old notion that the Earp myth is the American Iliad, the author is at his best when he delineates those fraught spasms of violence. “It is never a good sign for law-abiding citizens,” he writes at one high point, “to see Johnny Ringo rush into town, both him and his horse all in a lather.” Indeed not, even if Ringo wound up killing himself and law-abiding Tombstone faded into obscurity when the silver played out.
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21458-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
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