Skillful and prolific pop historian Weintraub (Charlotte and Lionel, 2003, etc.) accompanies The Father of His Country for a few months at the end of 1783.
The revolutionary war Washington had successfully prosecuted against all odds was over. The Treaty of Peace had been negotiated, and fair copies were under sail from England. Redcoats were leaving America. Hessians were deserting before they could be shipped home. The Great Man’s public service appeared to be at an end, and Washington happily prepared to return his commander’s commission to Congress. He simply wanted to get home to Martha at Mount Vernon in time for Christmas. In most histories, where General Washington slept on the trip is, understandably, not treated in great detail. Weintraub (Arts and Humanities Emeritus/Penn State) supplies that detail in abundance. From New York, where the formidable general movingly bade farewell to his officers at Fraunces Tavern (the best known episode of the journey home) to the village of Princeton, then a week in Philadelphia and on to Baltimore and Annapolis before he reached the Potomac and home, the hero was lauded and feted all the way. Balls, dinners, fireworks,and speeches of tribute all testified to the universal veneration for America’s chief citizen. In reply to the encomia, his faithful speechwriter scribbled away, though his Excellency (as Washington was habitually addressed) seemed more than equal to the task. The general sought only to lay his sword aside to become “a private Citizen on the Banks of the Potomack,” and he was hailed as a latter-day Cincinnatus who, after securing his nation’s independence, wanted simply to return to his farm. That he disdained all mention of a crown may be Washington’s greatest gift to what he hoped would become a respectable member of the family of nations. How he became a majestic Chief Executive is another story.
A short, but complete look at the long adieu that moved the newly united states spiritually and politically.Pub Date: Nov. 10, 2003
ISBN: 0-7432-4654-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Free Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2003
Categories: BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | HISTORY | UNITED STATES | GENERAL HISTORY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR
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Rock-’n’-soul icon Turner is happy at last, and she wants the world to know it.
The love story of the title is specific: The 78-year-old singer has been with her German mate for 33 years, and though bits and pieces of her body have been failing and misbehaving—she recounts a stroke, kidney failure, cancer, and other maladies—her love is going strong. It’s also generalized: Turner, born Anna Mae Bullock in Nutbush, Tennessee, is enchanted by the world, from her childhood countryside to the shores of Lake Zurich, where she has lived nearly half her life. There was another love story, of course, the one that fans will know and lament: her marriage to the drug-addicted, philandering Ike Turner, of whom she writes, pointedly, “at this point in my life, I’ve spent far more time without Ike than with him.” The author emerges from these pages as self-aware and hungry for knowledge and experience. Who knew that she was a dedicated reader of Dante as well as a “favorite aunt” of Keith Richards and a practitioner of Buddhism of such long standing that Ike himself demanded that she lose her shrine? The gossip is light, though she’s clear on the many reasons she broke away from Ike. She’s also forgiving, and as for others in her circle over the years, she calls Mel Gibson “Melvin” because of his “little boy quality,” though she doesn’t approve of certain bad behavior of his. Mostly, her portraits of such figures as David Bowie and Bryan Adams are affectionate, and the secrets she reveals aren’t terribly shocking. Those fishnet stockings and short skirts, she lets slip, were more practical than prurient, the stockings running less easily than nylons and the short skirts “easier for dancing because they left my legs free."
Fans of Aunty Entity and the lady who showed Mick Jagger his best moves will delight in Turner’s lightly spun memoir.Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-9824-3
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Nov. 13, 2018
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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
Categories: GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS
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