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CATHERINE THE GREAT

PORTRAIT OF A WOMAN

Roughly every decade since Nicholas and Alexandra (1967), popular historian Massie (Castles of Steel: Britain, Germany, and the Winning of the Great War at Sea, 2003, etc.) publishes a fat volume of European history for an eager readership; his latest will not disappoint.

Catherine the Great (1729–1796) was princess of a minor German state whose big chance arrived when she married Russian Czarina Elizabeth’s nephew and successor, a minor German duke who was unattractive, immature and lazy. Catherine was the opposite, so she passed a stormy, mostly unhappy 17 years before Elizabeth’s death in 1761; six months later Catherine snatched the throne from her husband. Under her energetic leadership, Russia modernized, expanded its empire and became accepted as one of the great powers of Europe. As attracted to Enlightenment ideas as contemporary monarchs, Catherine corresponded with and showered honors on Voltaire, Diderot and other French philosophers, and considered herself an enlightened despot but quickly gave up reform efforts in the face of aristocratic resistance. In the end, she ruled with an iron fist, tolerated little opposition and brutally suppressed several rebellions. Massie writes old-fashioned politics-and-great-men history, but few readers will resist his gripping description of colorful national leaders, their cutthroat rivalries and incessant wars. Most of this occurs after the 250-page mark, when Catherine takes power. Until then, the author recounts interminable petty intrigues, love affairs and itineraries of overprivileged, underemployed Russian aristocrats. His portraits of Catherine and other leading figures reveals a seemingly clairvoyant knowledge of their thoughts, emotions and conversation. Despite these lowbrow historical techniques, Massie delivers a fascinating account of dog-eat-dog politics in 18th-century Europe and the larger-than-life Russian empress who gave as good as she got.

 

Pub Date: Nov. 8, 2011

ISBN: 978-0-679-45672-8

Page Count: 688

Publisher: Random House

Review Posted Online: Sept. 17, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2011

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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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INTO THE WILD

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)

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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