by Phyllida Scrivens ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 10, 2017
Stirling's story is an inspiring example of a valiant professional life fashioned out of loss and tragedy, but the book is,...
The brave plight of a young German Jewish refugee to England and his fruitful contribution to postwar British life.
Having met “Joe Stirling” as part of a “Human Book” library project at the University of East Anglia, Scrivens became intrigued by the story of this native of the Rhineland whose parents died in the Holocaust. Born Günter Stern in 1924, the boy had a fairly happy youth growing up until 1933, when he became aware that a crisis was looming with the advent of a new chancellor, Adolf Hitler. The family’s decision to leave Germany after Kristallnacht in November 1938, when his father was arrested for the sole reason of being a Jew and incarcerated at Dachau for weeks, came too late, but they were determined to get their son onboard the Kindertransport out of Cologne in July 1939, just before the outbreak of war. After arriving in England, Stern lived with a guardian family in Wales, and then in Yardley and in Lydney, with the Allsopp family, committed members of the local Labour Party. While Stern was attending school during wartime within this welcoming community, his parents sent a final word in early 1942 that they were going to be “resettled” in Poland; this was the last missive from them. Enlisting in the British army in May 1944, the young man was urged to change his name to something less German-sounding: hence, Joe Stirling. He was not posted to Germany but became an effective officer in the Army Education Corps. Now married with children, Stirling was mentored within the Labour Party and became a spirited activist. On a group trip to visit Germany in 1954, Stirling struck on the enterprising idea of starting a travel tour business. The second part of this workmanlike book, less interesting than the first, follows Stirling’s long, successful career and leadership of the Lions Club International.
Stirling's story is an inspiring example of a valiant professional life fashioned out of loss and tragedy, but the book is, overall, unexceptional.Pub Date: Jan. 10, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5107-0865-5
Page Count: 260
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2016
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by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
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
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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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