by Robert Hardman ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 15, 2012
A reverential look inside the intricate workings of Queen, Inc.—likely to appeal mostly to British readers and royal...
A courtier’s fawning portrait of the longed-lived, thoroughly modern monarch.
At 60 years on the throne, Queen Elizabeth II celebrates her Diamond Jubilee in 2012. According to British royal biographer Hardman (A Year with the Queen, 2007, etc.), she has never been so well loved and appreciated by her people for he r many virtues. The author examines the success of her long reign in terms of her ability to confront the “anachronistic pantomime” of the hereditary institution and institute reforms (whether she liked it or not), as she was forced to do with Lord Airlie’s royal-efficiency controls put in place in the ’80s. The royal household resumed paying taxes, thus becoming self-sufficient and managing to prove to the British government its continued relevancy and independence. Hardman rehearses the highs and lows of the queen’s reign, from her triumphal accession in 1952 and world tour a year later, to the frequently abominable behavior of her wayward children, the fire at Windsor Castle in 1992 and aftermath of the death of Lady Diana. Things could only get better. Since the ’90s, the palace staff has modernized, computerized, consolidated dining rooms, opened the pool and royal opera box to more democratic use and acquired an in-palace dairy. The queen makes dizzying tours of her Commonwealth every year and has been served by a dozen British prime ministers, no longer choosing them herself. Except for a rare glimpse at her temper in an unguarded, human moment caught on film in 1954 (hurling shoes and curses at the fleeing Duke of Edinburgh, her husband), Elizabeth II remains in this stately portrait as enigmatic (or merely blank) as she ever was.
A reverential look inside the intricate workings of Queen, Inc.—likely to appeal mostly to British readers and royal watchers.Pub Date: April 15, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-60598-361-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Pegasus
Review Posted Online: Jan. 9, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2012
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by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 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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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...
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
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