Expert essays on a fascinating subject, edited by Blake (A History of Rhodesia, 1978, etc.) and Louis (English History and Culture/Univ. of Texas). The editors have rounded up 29 specialists who distill their expertise into brief pieces that summarize many aspects of Churchill (``perhaps the great figure in 20th-century history,'' suggest Blake and Louis). The text glitters with gems like Russian diplomat Ivan Maisky's prophecy (quoted in an essay by Robin Edmond) that Churchill would come to power ``when the critical moment...arrives...because he is a major and forceful figure, whereas the other members of the cabinet are colorless mediocrities.'' As George Addison explains elsewhere, Churchill, even in his early career, was not only a writer/journalist but a hard fighter for humane social reform, ``a founder of the welfare state.'' David Cannadine tackles Churchill's family, the Marlboroughs, a conniving, dishonest, nearly perfect disgrace to the very idea of aristocracy—but the future politician was loyal to them, Cannadine says, and it cost him dearly. David Craig's piece on Churchill and Germany follows, illustrating the British leader's limitations (no grasp of German language, literature, or music) but also his lack of rancor and a view of Versailles that was both shrewd and enlightened. ``Churchill and Stalin,'' by Robin Edmonds, reveals Churchill's lifelong antipathy to Russia; to understand the WW II rapprochement between Churchill and Stalin, it's necessary to read other essays that stress the Britisher's practicality and absolute willingness to sacrifice anything, including his own obsessions, for his country. Churchill's old- fashioned sense of the world surfaces repeatedly in relation to ideas and people (notably, De Gaulle, in a piece by Douglas Johnson), but the point emerges throughout that with Churchill's stubborn mind-set came a realistic, flexible acceptance of life that stood England in good stead. Lacking an essay on Churchill the writer; still, a solid bet for anyone concerned with 20th-century history.
Pub Date: March 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-393-03409-7
Page Count: 517
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1993
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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