by Ronda Rich ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2001
Though NASCAR hardly needs any more fans, Rich's enthusiastic voice will likely draw an additional crowd of the curious to...
An exuberant introduction to stock-car racing, from muffler bearings to personalities to track mystique, by former racing reporter and publicist Rich (What Southern Women Know, not reviewed).
This overview of the NASCAR scene is underpinned by a wealth of personal stories, thanks to the fact that Rich has been a fixture at the tracks for nearly 20 years. She began as a reporter covering the old short tracks and witnessed the transition to the big motor speedways. She has lived to see a sport once treated with regal condescension rise to unrivaled popularity, and she has known the men (and the few women) who got it there. Rich traces the roots of stock-car racing back to the Deep South moonshiners outrunning the law with their contraband and then challenging each other as to who was the fastest. She is able to convey to readers the brains and strategy involved in this sport; winners, she reminds us, are rarely the guys with the biggest engines. Rich cut her teeth writing about Bill Elliott's exploits, and she grew immeasurably in her understanding at the feet of Alan Kulwicki. She excels at bringing to life the big players: Richard Petty, Bobby and Davey Allison, Dale Earnhardt, Tim Richmond, and other superstars. Rich has plenty of storytelling verve and insider's knowledge; she keeps her anecdotes short and sweet—or sad, for there is plenty to be sad about in speed-driven NASCAR. She stumbles only when doubling as an advice columnist, dishing out tired clichés like “it takes only one success to wipe out a thousand failures” and “always remember that somebody's money somewhere makes your livelihood possible.” Even these, it should be noted, are of a piece with the direct, personal tone of her prose throughout.
Though NASCAR hardly needs any more fans, Rich's enthusiastic voice will likely draw an additional crowd of the curious to the track.Pub Date: May 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-06-000589-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: HarperEntertainment
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2002
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by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
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.
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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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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