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ONCE A HUSSAR

Name: ONCE A HUSSAR
Author: Ray Ellis
ISBN: 978-1-62873-729-5

A MEMOIR OF BATTLE, CAPTURE, AND ESCAPE IN WORLD WAR II

by Ray Ellis ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 5, 2014

Readers will yearn for the sequel, Always a Hussar, not yet published in the United States.

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Not a reprint or a lost manuscript but a freshly written, top-notch memoir by a former British artilleryman now in his 90s.

Like most middle-class British youths, Ellis was less concerned with Nazism than the excitement of an approaching war. “A continual backdrop of international tension accompanied the years of my transition from boyhood to manhood,” writes the author. In 1938, after considering various services, he joined the Hussars, formerly elite cavalry but now artillery. Readers will share Ellis’ dismay at the abysmal state of his nation’s rearmament as he and his mates encountered squalid facilities, foul food (even before rationing) and guns that were usually too old to function. By early 1940, his unit moved to Egypt for a painful introduction to desert campaigning with another group of soldiers who remained disorganized and poorly equipped. Fortunately, the author’s baptism of fire occurred against the Italian forces, who were even worse off. A year later, the newly arrived German Africa Corps routed the British, and Ellis’ unit found itself trapped in Tobruk during the legendary nine-month siege. Afterward, his unit advanced only to be wiped out in the April 1942 German offensive. During the fighting, most of his friends died. Ellis was captured and endured horrendous deprivations as a prisoner before escaping to live with surprisingly hospitable Italian peasants in Northern Italy until Allied forces drew near. Neither cynical nor nostalgic, the memoir is an engrossing account of life in the old British army, the actions of artillerymen in battle (exhausting and no less dangerous than infantry fighting), and the author’s experiences after capture, which required more moral fiber than battle.

Readers will yearn for the sequel, Always a Hussar, not yet published in the United States.

Pub Date: Aug. 5, 2014

ISBN: 978-1-62873-729-5

Page Count: 248

Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing

Review Posted Online: June 10, 2014

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2014

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

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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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GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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INTO THE WILD

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...

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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.

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor will it to readers of Krakauer's narrative. (4 maps) (First printing of 35,000; author tour)