by Sam Polk ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 19, 2016
A heartfelt and cautionary success story incorporating both the deceptive promises of wealth and the life-changing power of...
A former Wall Street hedge fund trader’s transformative turnabout from greed to philanthropy.
Raised in Southern California by a doting mother and a crass, dismissive father, Polk grew up dreaming of the day when the need for money wouldn’t dictate his every choice. In his engrossing debut memoir, the author retraces his beginnings as an overweight youth mercilessly bullied at summer camp and protective of his twin brother, Ben. Polk reinvented himself in high school, and his competitive nature matured as he became voraciously determined to outshine Ben in grades, sports, and dates. Acceptance at Columbia University further fed his overachievement fixation, though things almost derailed after bouts of bulimia, a suspension for theft, and problems involving drugs and alcohol. The memoir picks up narrative tension once Polk shifts his attention to his early 20s, during which his motivation and greed began to surmount his better judgment. A summer internship on a frantic stock market trading floor fueled a drive to succeed in business. Once he was hired on Wall Street, the salary and exorbitant bonuses became intoxicants to Polk, who became addicted to money with an eagerness to adopt the “easy confidence of millionaires.” The author writes with sincerity and passion, traversing over the increasing trouble his greed immersed him in, though it’s clear his behavior is derived more from a self-sabotaging, deep-seated psychological need to accumulate wealth, validation, and for “someone to tell me I was worth being taken care of.” Though Polk impressively aced the Wall Street learning curve and became a high-ranking senior trader, his introspection brought his insatiable avarice, maltreatment of women, and general misery into stark focus. This epiphany, somewhat rare for a self-made millionaire, inspired him to break away and embark on more personally enriching and rewarding humanitarian ventures like the food, education, and empowerment-building program he founded for families in low-income communities.
A heartfelt and cautionary success story incorporating both the deceptive promises of wealth and the life-changing power of self-awareness.Pub Date: July 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4767-8598-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: April 30, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
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PROFILES
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 Elie Wiesel ; edited by Alan Rosen
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by Elie Wiesel ; illustrated by Mark Podwal
BOOK REVIEW
by Elie Wiesel ; translated by Marion Wiesel
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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