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DAUGHTER OF THE AIR

THE BRIEF SOARING LIFE OF CORNELIA FORT

A biography of aviator Cornelia Fort, from her wealthy Nashville (Tenn.) childhood to her pioneering career as a pilot and early death. Simbeck, a seasoned professional writer, has consulted letters, books, and articles of the time, interviewing many of Fort’s family members and friends. Born in 1919, she grew up on her family’s farm with three older brothers and a younger sister, leading an active, privileged life bound only by the strict rules of her father, a medical doctor, successful businessman, and major landowner—first citizen of the city. After watching the country-fair daredevil acts of early barnstorming aviators, the father made his sons take an oath never to take up flying, but he never reckoned on Cornelia, his feisty debutante-to-be daughter. Against her father’s wishes, she attended progressive Sarah Lawrence College and relished the lifestyle of the rich and famous in nearby New York City. After her father’s death, she broke away from her family’s social restraints and took flying lessons from a veteran aviator, becoming hooked on the freedom of the skies. Later she found herself as a licensed instructor with a student in the air over Pearl Harbor as the Japanese struck. After landing, Fort and the student jumped out and ran for their lives as the plane was riddled with bullets on the ground. Simbeck describes the early days of the US entry into WWII, as about 100 experienced female pilots were invited to form the Women’s Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron (WAFS), to transport training planes from factories to air bases to free up men for combat training. Fort tragically died at 24 while trying new formation flying. As the war ended, the 1,100 female pilots were discharged as WASPS (Women’s Airforce Service Pilots). An unusual story of a gallant young spirit who loved her country and died in its service. Another tribute to the “greatest generation” of WWII.

Pub Date: Aug. 19, 1999

ISBN: 0-87113-688-0

Page Count: 272

Publisher: Atlantic Monthly

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1999

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NIGHT

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. 

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.

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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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

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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