A lifelong magazine journalist files a striking travelogue of life, inspiration and encouragement for fellow retirees, equally intriguing for anyone who appreciates intellect and wit.
Rowan (First Dogs: American Presidents and Their Best Friends, 2009, etc.) employs simple yet sophisticated prose, as well as an amazing capacity for detail and memory, in this chronicle of his personal experiences, relationships and globetrotting. Details of the author's breathtaking and sometimes dangerous career—from dodging bullets on the front lines of the Korean War to unforgettable audiences with world leaders, American presidents and celebrities, are interwoven with the stuff of real life—including his battle with cancer, his passion for jogging and more than 50 years of marriage to wife Helen. Despite his entry into the nonagenarian register, the author never lost his edge or his hope and thirst for knowledge, proving that one man or woman's life can influence and even change history, regardless of age. His account proves that with dogged determination, even those with reduced mobility—a natural consequence of old age—can adapt and discover new interests and joys. His prose is poetic and replete with colorful literary and philosophical quotes from renowned writers and thinkers. Rowan has a keen eye for detail, and his experiences, as he so aptly writes, are no "manual for growing old gracefully." This book is more than memoir; it will serve as inspiration to anyone who fears loss or stagnation in old age.
Pub Date: April 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-7627-6376-4
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Lyons Press
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
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
A standout immigrant coming-of-age story.
In her first nonfiction book, novelist Grande (Dancing with Butterflies, 2009, etc.) delves into her family’s cycle of separation and reunification.
Raised in poverty so severe that spaghetti reminded her of the tapeworms endemic to children in her Mexican hometown, the author is her family’s only college graduate and writer, whose honors include an American Book Award and International Latino Book Award. Though she was too young to remember her father when he entered the United States illegally seeking money to improve life for his family, she idolized him from afar. However, she also blamed him for taking away her mother after he sent for her when the author was not yet 5 years old. Though she emulated her sister, she ultimately answered to herself, and both siblings constantly sought affirmation of their parents’ love, whether they were present or not. When one caused disappointment, the siblings focused their hopes on the other. These contradictions prove to be the narrator’s hallmarks, as she consistently displays a fierce willingness to ask tough questions, accept startling answers, and candidly render emotional and physical violence. Even as a girl, Grande understood the redemptive power of language to define—in the U.S., her name’s literal translation, “big queen,” led to ridicule from other children—and to complicate. In spelling class, when a teacher used the sentence “my mamá loves me” (mi mamá me ama), Grande decided to “rearrange the words so that they formed a question: ¿Me ama mi mamá? Does my mama love me?”
A standout immigrant coming-of-age story.Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4516-6177-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: June 11, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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