by Peter M. Leschak ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 2002
History, danger, and courage, intriguingly rendered.
From Leschak (Letters from Side Lake, not reviewed, etc.), a good look into the mind of one wildland firefighter, his motivations and methods of operation.
Though there are episodes throughout about fighting “magnificent, dangerous fires in remote and rugged terrain,” what Leschak focuses on here are the questions of why he chose such a supremely high-risk job and whether he measures up to the quick-thinking, life-saving acts of Reverend Peter Pernin during the hellfire that struck Peshtigo, Wisconsin, in 1871, killing an estimated 1,200 people and burning 1,800 square miles. Leschak, too, had trained for the ministry, but he bridled at the authoritarianism and yearned for more direct personal responsibility in his life. There’s plenty of zeal-touched imagery here, from “the romantic attraction of hardship and hazard amid a corpulent society obsessed with mammon” through phrases like “grasp the hot iron,” referring to a trial by fire believed by Saxons to distinguish the innocent from the guilty. It might be a stretch to say that the plain-speaking Leschak has a death wish (“I sure wouldn’t want to miss it. Miss what? Let’s slice to the core: miss the chance to die”), though on the daring meter he rates very high. “Action,” he says, “is the crux of sentient life,” and the crazy-sublime world of wildfires is just the place to find it, though he admits that “anyone who does it for the money is either desperately derelict or requires remedial arithmetic.” Like Pernin, who led dozens to safety during the Peshtigo conflagration, Leschak “accepted the duty of decision” by becoming a crew chief. The urgency and drama that infuse his story never feel overstated but aptly fit the circumstances.
History, danger, and courage, intriguingly rendered.Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-06-251777-5
Page Count: 288
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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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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