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The Boy From Lwów

Name: The Boy From Lwów
Author: Norma Olbert
ISBN: 978-1500455699

A STORY OF WORLD WAR II POLAND

by Norma Olbert ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 17, 2014

A lean, engaging account of a heroic young man’s resistance and survival under communist and Nazi occupation.

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Olbert’s debut biography chronicles her husband’s experiences as a young man in Poland during the second world war.

Staszek Olbert was born in the eastern Polish city of Lwów but spent his childhood in the small village of Pustomyty. While his rural childhood was in many ways happy and peaceful, the region’s violent history constantly loomed in the background. He grew up hearing stories about his father, who died after suffering for several years from injuries sustained in World War I. Staszek’s uncle Józef warned him not to play soldier as a child because “Someday, my boy, you may well have to fight in a real war, and that will not be a game.” As a teenager, Staszek exceled in school, but his studies were interrupted in 1939, when eastern Poland faced occupation, first by the Soviet Union and then by Nazi Germany. While laboring under the Germans, he was recruited by an operative from the underground Polish Home Army, and Józef’s prediction from long ago became a reality. Staszek contributed to the national cause in any way he could, ultimately fighting in the 1944 Warsaw Uprising. When that failed, he and his surviving comrades were sent to a German prisoner-of-war camp. Although this book is a third-person biography, the fact that the author’s subject is her husband, and that her narrative draws primarily from his recollections, allows for a more intimate accounting of his experiences. For this reason, the book reads more like a personal memoir than a historical biography. Staszek’s perspective is intriguing and relatable throughout. However, it comes with certain limitations. Although the descriptions of his internal reflections always ring true, the reconstructed dialogue often seems unrealistic, and the historical context of Poland’s relations with other nations, as well as its internal relations with ethnic minorities such as Jews, Germans, and Ukrainians, seems simplistic and underexplored. Still, despite these missed opportunities, Olbert accomplishes her primary task of depicting Staszek’s powerful personal story. His hopes for himself, his family, and his nation are moving, and his perseverance is inspiring.

A lean, engaging account of a heroic young man’s resistance and survival under communist and Nazi occupation.

Pub Date: Dec. 17, 2014

ISBN: 978-1500455699

Page Count: 224

Publisher: CreateSpace

Review Posted Online: Sept. 2, 2015

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | HISTORICAL & MILITARY | HISTORICAL & MILITARY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

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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

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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INTO THE WILD

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...

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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.

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor will it to readers of Krakauer's narrative. (4 maps) (First printing of 35,000; author tour)