by Rye Barcott ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 2011
A thoughtful examination of the nature of service and the effects of violence on the human spirit.
Barcott's accomplishments—he's a retired Marine Corps captain and co-founder of a nonprofit organization serving Kenyan youth—provide the background for this debut memoir.
The author’s father, a Vietnam veteran who won a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart, was a powerful role model for his son, and his mother, an anthropologist, was also important in shaping his worldview. When he was 14, Barcott joined his parents on a trip to Africa, which opened his eyes to the harsh reality of poverty. Five years later, he was studying Swahili at the University of North Carolina on a Marine scholarship in the hope of returning to Africa. At that time, before 9/11 and the launching of the War on Terror, Barcott expected that, as a Marine, he would be involved in humanitarian assistance and peacekeeping missions during his 8-year obligatory service. As it turned out, he was also put on active duty in Iraq. After his junior year, he received a grant to spend the summer in Kenya to research the effect of ethnic conflict on youth living in Africa's largest slum, Kibera. Living there, he shared food and lodging with his new friends. He writes movingly that he had “unique access to remarkable people,” who had a strong sense of community and were struggling to survive. Eventually, Barcott decided to partner with two of the people he met there to set up a mentoring program and to establish a community health service. In 2002, the organization became Carolina for Kibera. After graduating from UNC, he became an active-duty Marine. Despite his doubts about the Iraq war, he admits to a fascination with his own destructive impulses in the heat of battle.
A thoughtful examination of the nature of service and the effects of violence on the human spirit.Pub Date: April 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-60819-217-5
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Dec. 29, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2011
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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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