The diet/exercise media guru, autobiographically speaking, is sweatin” to the oldies. Millions of overweight Americans (especially older women), adore Simmons for his empathy and for inspiring them on TV, videos (like “Sweatin” to the Oldies”) and mall appearances to eat right and exercise their way to better health. Others, however, can see Simmons as a bit too driven and fawning. This candid book helps nonfans understand, if not like, the author. This “court jester of health” dons his droll, upbeat persona. There are many food jokes, like wishing he were born in Italy, where so many people were “little plum tomatoes and little provolone cheeses,” but he often resembles the clown crying in his makeup trailer. Raised as Milton in New Orleans, Simmons was very attached to his mother, a fan dancer turned cosmetic saleslady, and bitterly feuded with his stay-at-home dad, who had failed in show business. Food “was a religious experience,” and the rotund boy blamed his brother when he raided the refrigerator and even put the family’s house up for sale. Even more troubling traits for this inspirational icon are revealed when he quits Weight Watchers for earning too many pig pins as a weight gainer, refuses to attend his father’s funeral, and calls his housekeeper and six dogs the woman and children in his life. Getting the best revenge on dad, whom he reconciles with to the point of embarrassing him with public kisses, Simmons recounts how (after beating obesity and bulimia) he went from a bit part on General Hospital to his own successful TV show, cook- and diet books, exercise videos, promos of fat-free popcorn at K-mart and buying mansions in Beverly Hills. There are many examples of heroic work to rescue 1,000-pounders and other victims of disease, but many readers will only conclude that Simmons is still crazy and that his love handles are protruding from his tank top. (First printing of 200,000; $400,000 ad/promo; author tour)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1999
ISBN: 1-57719-356-3
Page Count: 288
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
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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