by Peter Benjaminson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 2012
A moving tribute to an artist who should not be forgotten.
From journalist and Motown chronicler Benjaminson (The Lost Supreme: The Life of Dreamgirl Florence Ballard, 2009, etc.), a compelling, sympathetic biography of Motown’s first diva Mary Wells (1943–1992).
Before Diana Ross or any other Motown star, there was Wells. Discovered at age 17 by Berry Gordy, president of the then-fledgling Motown, in 1960, the young Detroit schoolgirl went on to create a number of crossover hits (appealing to both black and white audiences), including her signature song, “My Guy.” Wells would define the style (long gowns and glamour) for later female Motown artists and the sound (“a strong melody, a noticeable beat, and accessibility for all”) that would bring enormous success and wealth to Motown. Yet, in a dispute over money, Wells left Motown, and while she spent the rest of her life trying to do so, she was never able to equal the success she had there. Trekking from one record company to another, she could never recreate the elusive magic of recording for Motown. “Nostalgia,” however, “kept her performing career alive,” and she performed “almost every other night, week after week,” becoming, for better or worse, “Queen of the Oldies.” Benjaminson ably captures the artistic milieu of early Motown, in which Wells’ art flourished. He also offers an unvarnished account of her tumultuous personal life: her numerous, sometimes disastrous, relations with a series of men, the drug and alcohol addictions that consumed her later in life, and her long battle to defeat the cancer that would take her life. While a flawed figure, Wells faced life’s hardships “by struggling and achieving until the very end.”
A moving tribute to an artist who should not be forgotten.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-56976-248-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 5, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 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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