by Stanley P. Hirshson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 1, 2002
Hirshorn’s highly useful reevaluation will be of particular interest to students of modern military history.
A sprawling life of the brilliant but very nasty American general known by his soldiers as “Old Blood and Guts.”
Hirshson (History/Queens Coll.; The White Tecumseh, 1997, etc.) does a fine job of capturing George S. Patton’s contradictions and the decidedly unpleasant aspects of his character, both correcting and amplifying the work of earlier, often worshipful biographers. He carefully reconstructs the famed incident in which Patton struck a battle-fatigued soldier in a field hospital in Sicily and reveals that when the combat correspondents on hand reported his abusive behavior, Patton’s circle took it as yet another campaign on the part of Communists and Jews to sabotage their hero’s career. Patton himself was a lifelong anti-Semite, Hirshson reveals, his attitudes inherited from his patrician father; even after the liberation of the Nazi death camps he would insist that Jews “are lower than animals.” His prejudices, remarkable even in the context of the time, coupled with his refusal to remove former Nazis from government posts in occupied Bavaria, led to his removal from command; the 1970 movie starring George C. Scott wrongly attributes his demotion to Patton’s anti-Soviet views, which he indeed held but did not widely air. The chief flaw in this capable book is Hirshson’s tendency to overdetail. It is useful to know that Patton was dyslexic and did not learn to read until early adolescence, for instance, but not so much to know the statistical incidence of dyslexia in the present general population. Still, readers who keep at this long, dense biography will see that Hirshson treats Patton’s very real accomplishments on the battlefield with great respect. After all, the general who seized more enemy-held territory than any other at tremendous cost to the foe deserves his reputation as a strategist to rival Napoleon . . . or Genghis Khan.
Hirshorn’s highly useful reevaluation will be of particular interest to students of modern military history.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-06-000982-9
Page Count: 848
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2002
Share your opinion of this book
More by Debi Unger
BOOK REVIEW
by Debi Unger ; Irwin Unger with Stanley P. Hirshson
BOOK REVIEW
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
Share your opinion of this book
by Jon Krakauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1996
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
Share your opinion of this book
More by Jon Krakauer
BOOK REVIEW
by Jon Krakauer
BOOK REVIEW
by Jon Krakauer
BOOK REVIEW
by Jon Krakauer
More About This Book
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Hey there, book lover.
We’re glad you found a book that interests you!
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Don’t fret. We’ll find you.