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HOWARD STERN: KING OF ALL MEDIA

Name: HOWARD STERN: KING OF ALL MEDIA
Author: Paul D. Colford
ISBN: 0-312-14269-2

THE UNAUTHORIZED BIOGRAPHY

by Paul D. Colford ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 26, 1996

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Despite brash touting as being unauthorized, this uninspired biography of the shock-jock is as mild as they come. While Stern is routinely deplored by the chattering classes as a base vulgarian, lately a strong revisionist swell has begun championing him as a vulgarian of rare genius and insight (look for such hallmark cognoscenti approbations as ``Rabelaisian''). Certainly, his achievements have been impressive. Buoyed by his key demographic, men 25 to 34, Stern has conquered almost every medium he's tackled, from radio to cable TV to books. Egocentric as it may be, he can and does justifiably boast of being the ``king of all media.'' Long-running battles with the FCC over indecency have only served to raise his stature further to that of celebrated First Amendment defender. Like many show-biz biographers, Colford (The Rush Limbaugh Story, 1993) provides the prose equivalent of paint- by-numbers—broad clear strokes that reveal only their essential flatness. And given Stern's unabashed, confessional tendencies and self-obsessions, his listeners are already familiar with most of the details presented here. Though Colford claims substantial in- depth research, he manages to conceal most of it effortlessly. In the footsteps of countless newspaper profiles, Colford points out that much of Stern's hyperbolic persona is an act. The loud- mouthed, foul, opinionated, even bigoted DJ is in reality a polite, softspoken family man and devotee of Transcendental Meditation. Colford does a good job, however, at digging into the secretive Stern's finances, revealing that despite his chronic complaints of being underpaid, Stern earns about $8 million a year (this is a man who dropped out of the New York gubernatorial race in part to avoid revealing this figure). For those truly interested in finding out about Stern, his radio show is much more entertaining and revealing than this pallid, perfunctory bio. (16 pages b&w photos, not seen) (First serial to the Los Angeles Times Magazine)

Pub Date: July 26, 1996

ISBN: 0-312-14269-2

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1996

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | 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)