by Nikki Haley ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 3, 2012
If you’re a fellow traveler, this is your book. If not, you likely won’t pick it up.
South Carolina’s governor stakes out her red-blooded American credentials in a by-the-numbers memoir.
Haley, as was reported back when she briefly made the news, was born Randhawa, the child of Punjabi immigrants. Since her father wore a turban and her kin looked different from the other denizens of the Piedmont, she suffered all the expected abuse and racism of the time and place. Apparently she never considered the political leanings of her tormentors in that redder-than-red state, though, because she jumped into GOP politics once she had the self-described epiphany that people listened to her when she talked. Perhaps that affiliation was merely the product of some perceived sense of loyalty, for the sense we get is that Randhawa/Haley has long gone along to get along: “I got a scholarship to go to Clemson to study textile management. Cotton, wool, and silk weren’t really my areas of interest, but I thought, Fine, I’ll do it. I just wanted to go to Clemson.” Haley’s approach to politicking is homespun and commonsensical: Ply the audience with Krispy Kremes, win over legislators by doing small favors, profess to love “the people.” On the personal front, she allows that she doesn’t watch TV or read newspapers at home so that her children aren’t exposed to the meanness of politics (so much for education). There’s scarcely a moment that approaches originality in these pages. Every note seems scripted, including her protestations that it’s Washington that keeps her from doing her job: Obama bad, Reagan good, etc. Haley’s prose rises above a monotonous whisper only when she gets on the subject of the Tea Party: “That’s what I love most about the Tea Party. It’s drawing the line on government arrogance and overspending with the taxpayers’ money.”
If you’re a fellow traveler, this is your book. If not, you likely won’t pick it up.Pub Date: April 3, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-59523-085-0
Page Count: 250
Publisher: Sentinel
Review Posted Online: Dec. 12, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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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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