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A GRAND COMPLICATION

THE RACE TO BUILD THE WORLD'S MOST LEGENDARY WATCH

A masterful approach to composition combines with a fascinating plot and makes its subject entertaining as well as...

A unique competition between two scions of the Gilded Age is the driver for this fresh look at the mores of the rich and powerful.

The aim of the competition was to acquire the world's most complicated timepieces. The contenders were Ward Packard, founder of the eponymous luxury automobile brand, and Henry Graves, a financier whose family's money was made in railroads, coal, cement and lumber. Packard commissioned pieces to his own specification, while Graves desired to be the owner of the best. Former Time writer Perman (In-N-Out Burger: A Behind-the-Counter Look at the Fast-Food Chain that Breaks All the Rules, 2010, etc.) applies her investigative skills and attention to detail to a sharply focused but wide-ranging account of the behind-the-scenes struggle as it was waged through the precision engineering and technical expertise of Europe's greatest watchmaking establishments, such as Patek-Philippe, Breguet and Vacheron Constantin. The author also includes a history of time-keeping and watchmaking, through the invention of mechanical action and the later competition to locate longitude. Perman documents how America's wealthy replaced Europe's royalty and aristocrats as patrons of the watchmakers. She effectively combines these different strands, providing a compelling social history, especially during the years before and after the stock market crash of 1929, as the collections were assembled, then dispersed and are now being reconstituted by the very companies that first made them.

A masterful approach to composition combines with a fascinating plot and makes its subject entertaining as well as compelling.

Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2013

ISBN: 978-1-4391-9008-1

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Free Press

Review Posted Online: Oct. 22, 2012

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2012

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NIGHT

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. 

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.

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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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

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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