The riveting adventure of a red-haired country girl who became, in Smith's characterization, the last of the great courtesans and an internationally recognized diplomat. Pamela Harriman's life is the stuff of romance novels. The seductive heroine dallies with a series of rich and well-born lovers, including not only first husband Randolph Churchill, but American diplomat Averell Harriman, broadcasting legend Edward R. Murrow, millionaires Jock Whitney, Aly Khan, Gianni Agnelli, and Elie de Rothschild. Not the least of her admirers (but not her lover) was Winston Churchill, who was genuinely fond of his daughter-in-law. She in turn played on the Churchill name to bolster a brilliant career on the international social circuit, further enhanced by her marriage to American theatrical producer Leland Hayward. Widowed by Hayward, she married former lover Averell Harriman. After Harriman's death and with his legacy, she used her charm and social skills to become the ``den mother'' of the Democratic Party, earning an appointment as ambassador to France. Relying on many of the same sources but without the sour bite of Christopher Ogden's 1994 Harriman biography, Smith (In All His Glory: William S. Paley, 1990) gives us a portrait of a woman who has left many wounded in her wake (including her neglected son), but who has spent her life, as she wanted to, at the center of power and wealth. She brings Harriman's story up to the present, with a detailed portrait of her acrimonious feud with the other Harriman heirs. Attractive but not beautiful, charming but not witty or well educated, how did Pam do it? As many of her famous predecessors, like Pompadour and de Maintenon, did: With extraordinary determination and by catering to her man. Sure to ruffle the feathers of feminists, but a convincing depiction of an era not very long ago when the only route to the top for a woman of average ability and above-average ambition was in the wake of a man. (32 pages b&w photos, not seen). (First serial to Vanity Fair)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-684-80950-8
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1996
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
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
SEEN & HEARD
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