An affectionate study by a respected Churchill scholar.
An engaging alphabetical encyclopedia of the animals Winston Churchill loved (and hunted) and used as imagery and metaphors in his fiery prose.
It takes a devoted scholar of Churchill to be able to convey with fluent familiarity such details in the British leader’s life and extensive body of writing. British author Brendon (Eminent Elizabethans: Rupert Murdoch, Margaret Thatcher, Prince Charles & Mick Jagger, 2013, etc.)—fellow of Churchill College and of the Royal Society of Literature and the former keeper of the Churchill Archives Centre—certainly fits the bill, and he offers an unquestionably unique look at the former prime minister. As the son of an aristocrat (his American mother’s family was also wealthy) born at the splendid palace of Blenheim, Churchill was raised to revere hunting as the apotheosis of Victorian male valor and virility; at the same time, he was taught that “kindness to animals was the mark and the duty of civilization” (despite his carnivorous diet). The “inconsistencies” in Churchill’s “wit, wisdom, and wayward genius” abound, and Brendon knocks against them throughout the book. The “bestiary” starts with “albatross”—the well-read Churchill used the Ancient Mariner’s anguished response “I shot the Albatross” while expressing his frustration with Parliament’s wrangling about Indian independence—and ends with “zoos,” since one of his favorite activities was visiting them. Many of the animals in his metaphorical repertory came from the countryside, which he knew intimately as a boy. These include badgers, birds, hares, and foxes, animals he loved as a “humane sentimentalist” but also hunted for sport. Regarding lions, writes the author, “no twentieth-century leader has been more lionized or has attracted more leonine imagery than Churchill.” Dogs and horses were his favorites, but Brendon’s most touching portrait shows Churchill feeding his beloved “golden horde” of goldfish at Chartwell as a distraction from the overbearing worries of the 1940s.
An affectionate study by a respected Churchill scholar.Pub Date: Aug. 6, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-64313-136-8
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Pegasus
Review Posted Online: May 11, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
SEEN & HEARD
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