by Paula Tarnapol Whitacre ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 2017
An illuminating portrait of a remarkable abolitionist working behind Union lines.
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A debut biography recounts the travails of a relief agent during the Civil War.
As a relief agent for the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Sewing Society, Julia Wilbur had a unique vantage point from which to view the Civil War. Fortunately for posterity, she kept a diary of her experiences providing services to freed slaves (or “contrabands”) in Alexandria, Virginia. And former Washington Post staff writer Whitacre puts that and other primary sources to great effect in her striking account of Wilbur’s life as a singular American woman during the turmoil of the second half of the 19th century. “By fighting for what she saw was just, often against those in positions of authority, she transformed herself into, in her own words, ‘a sort of missionary-at-large, a woman-of-all work,’ ” Whitacre writes. Wilbur was a schoolteacher in Rochester, New York, when she was first exposed to abolitionism by attending lectures given by Frederick Douglass. The slave-turned–orator and activist became part of Wilbur’s social circle, and his daughter was briefly a student at her school. By the fall of 1862, Wilbur needed a new purpose in life and used her abolitionist connections to secure the relief agent position behind the Union lines. Whitacre deftly depicts in telling detail not only the deplorable conditions to which freed slaves were subjected in Alexandria—at a hospital, “a mother sat holding her dead child, wrapped in a piece of ticking”—but also the racism and sexism of Union officials. Wilbur clashed repeatedly with the superintendent of contrabands, a Baptist minister named Albert Gladwin, who told her that she was “out of my sphere, & he does not like to see a woman wearing men’s clothes.” He was only removed from office after an outcry over his racist policy of burying black Union soldiers in the cemetery for civilian freedmen rather than with their military comrades. “Colored people are still treated like slaves in Alexandria, and the slave laws of the State are still enforced,” Wilbur lamented. In her engrossing book, Whitacre skillfully adds historical context to produce a well-rounded picture of a woman who found her purpose in battling “indifference and prejudice” and making a difference.
An illuminating portrait of a remarkable abolitionist working behind Union lines.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-61234-855-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Potomac Books
Review Posted Online: May 7, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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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