by Stanley Fenton ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 27, 2013
A stimulating glimpse into the life and career of an Australian pilot.
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In his memoir, Fenton tells of how, since the first time he saw an airplane fly over his remote island home in Australia, there was never any doubt what his life’s calling would be.
Fenton has put together a brief but comprehensive biography of his fascinating life since being born in 1941 on Lord Howe Island, about 400 miles northeast of Sydney, where he still lives. Depictions of his carefree childhood on the wild, beautiful island can be enthralling: surfing off white-sand beaches, gathering exotic foods from the island and the vast ocean surrounding it, the bliss-filled days of youth. With no telephone service, contact with Australia consisted of supply vessels and infrequent flights. Fenton’s father, who helped operate the island’s radio and Morse code station, taught his son the basics of the code, a skill that would come in handy later in his life. As a child, Fenton was mesmerized by the huge flying boats that brought tourists to the island. Early on, he decided that one way or another, airplanes and flying would be a major part of his life. At the age of 15, he was accepted into the Royal Australian Air Force Apprentice program; it wasn’t flight school, but he was on his way. The vivid portrayals of his military training are interspersed with in-depth commentaries on what he saw and experienced while there. Fenton began service as a teenage apprentice in 1957 and, after 29 years, ended as a wing commander in 1986. During that time, he learned to fly bombers and fighters, became a commissioned officer and fought in Vietnam. The author is adept at condensing considerable time spans into short, salient descriptions of events, providing a fast-moving, captivating narrative. In fact, some areas fly by a bit too quickly, leaving questions unanswered, though it won’t be a deal breaker for interested readers.
A stimulating glimpse into the life and career of an Australian pilot.Pub Date: March 27, 2013
ISBN: 978-1483607351
Page Count: 140
Publisher: Xlibris
Review Posted Online: Aug. 1, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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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