by Roger Rosenblatt ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 1, 1994
A broad collection of pieces by the MacNeil/Lehrer commentator and author of Life Itself (1992) and Children of War (1983). (Over half of the latter is reprinted here). The ``Man in the Water'' is the heroic passenger in the 1982 air crash who pulled others from the icy Potomac and then perished. With such unforgettable, often inexplicable images, Rosenblatt connects the subject of death with ``the deepest mysteries,'' which he finds ``in facts.'' In the tradition of his heartbreaking essays on children in Cambodia, Belfast, and Lebanon, his recent essay on the Sudan describes a civilization ``on the brink of extinction.'' Some 100,000 boys walked barefoot, sometimes 1,000 miles for weeks or months, to escape the warfare that killed their families and destroyed their Sudanese villages, where Rosenblatt noticed a sign in a hospital posted for the American Ambassador that read ``thank you for coming to see us dying of disease and injuries.'' Rosenblatt conveys the horror of this desolate, isolated landscape ruled by the ``silence'' of starving children too weak to cry out and by the world's failure to recognize and respond. Always analytical, he attempts to decipher Nixon, Reagan, the Louds, Murphy Brown, ``Black Autobiography,'' Lewis Thomas facing death, the teaching of literature, and even ``beauty''—which he recognized in the presence of three elderly women who would read to him as a child. The guiding persona who seeks out morally wrenching subjects is also funny on the subjects of fast food, his attempts to diet, and his brother's telephone pranks. His iconoclastic advice to journalists is to ``betray your sources'' and to ``dwell in a state of puzzlement'' by acknowledging contradictions in people like his courtly physician father and in situations like the ``remote control'' Gulf War, where television seemed to lead away from the truth. In these acute observations and provocative stories, Rosenblatt proves himself one of America's finest and most needed commentators.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-679-42693-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1993
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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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