A dense work to be read in conjunction with the humanist’s own eloquent writing.
Revisiting the public and private life of the extraordinary humanist in light of religious divisions of the 16th century.
In this translated work of scholarly minutiae, French Renaissance historian and Montaigne expert Desan (Renaissance Literature and History of Culture/Univ. of Chicago; editor: The Oxford Handbook of Montaigne, 2016, etc.) asserts that readers should not ignore Michel de Montaigne’s life (1533-1592) as a public official, the details of which shed light on his lifelong literary achievement, the Essays. Indeed, Montaigne’s act of intimate literary introspection invites critics to delve into his biography, beginning with his assumption of the noble name of Montaigne for the first time in his family’s history since his wealthy merchant forebears purchased the Montaigne seigniory in Bordeaux a century before. As the first surviving son, classically educated, a magistrate by profession and then mayor of Bordeaux, like his father, Montaigne had unique ambitions of social ascension during the era of smoldering Catholic-Protestant tensions. He served several kings as well as (Protestant) Henry of Navarre, who would become Henri IV, and he conceived of his writing as history and politics, but the essays would change over time to reflect his gradual withdrawal from public life (he never became an ambassador) and adoption of the life of a gentleman author. Desan shows how Montaigne assumed the métier of a writer from 1588 onward, literally annotating his previous essays by writing in the margins and altogether inventing a new style—what Desan terms more of a memoir than essay. Would his life had been remarkable if he had not written the Essays? No. Would he have been so well-known had not a brilliant young admirer, Marie de Gournay, devoted her life to editing and publishing his evolved essays posthumously? Probably not. Desan delves into these questions and much more in a hefty biography that will appeal most to academics.
A dense work to be read in conjunction with the humanist’s own eloquent writing.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-691-16787-9
Page Count: 816
Publisher: Princeton Univ.
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2016
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 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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