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 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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