Della Valle has come a long way, and his story is heartfelt; the flat, lackluster delivery, however, is ultimately a barrier...
Gloomy, by-the-numbers memoir of a recovering substance abuser.
The author, a native of Newark, N.J., recalls feeling helpless and afraid when his mother was diagnosed with breast cancer in her early 30s. That was just the first in a series of traumas that would mark his early years. In junior-high, in the 1960s, Della Valle fell in with a group of Italian kids who drank and did drugs, leading him into a downward spiral of narcotics, robberies and street-fighting. With each arrest, his lenient, oblivious father bailed him out of jail. A few stints in rehab failed to stem the flow of an addiction that would become a “monster” if he didn’t “feed it on time.” A major low occurred when the teenaged Della Valle fought with his brother on the day of his mother’s funeral. His father forced him into a then-experimental methadone recovery program, which only led to more drug use. Random, short-lived jobs failed to redirect his energies, until he met Debbie. At 25, Della Valle married Debbie, had two daughters, got off drugs (though not alcohol) and became a car-selling workaholic. That normalcy was fleeting, though, and the author relapsed with a vengeance, abusing cocaine, abandoning his family to shack up with Donna, a nightclub hostess, embezzling from an auto dealership, becoming homeless and eventually doing lengthy jail time for possession and burglary. Rehab and sobriety bring much-needed clarity. Still, the telling of this relentless self-destruction becomes tedious, making the author’s eventual recovery and convalescence come as a relief not only to him, but to the reader as well.
Della Valle has come a long way, and his story is heartfelt; the flat, lackluster delivery, however, is ultimately a barrier to passion and conviction.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 224
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Worthwhile reference stuffed with facts and illustrations.
A compendium of charts, time lines, lists and illustrations to accompany study of the Bible.
This visually appealing resource provides a wide array of illustrative and textually concise references, beginning with three sets of charts covering the Bible as a whole, the Old Testament and the New Testament. These charts cover such topics as biblical weights and measures, feasts and holidays and the 12 disciples. Most of the charts use a variety of illustrative techniques to convey lessons and provide visual interest. A worthwhile example is “How We Got the Bible,” which provides a time line of translation history, comparisons of canons among faiths and portraits of important figures in biblical translation, such as Jerome and John Wycliffe. The book then presents a section of maps, followed by diagrams to conceptualize such structures as Noah’s Ark and Solomon’s Temple. Finally, a section on Christianity, cults and other religions describes key aspects of history and doctrine for certain Christian sects and other faith traditions. Overall, the authors take a traditionalist, conservative approach. For instance, they list Moses as the author of the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible) without making mention of claims to the contrary. When comparing various Christian sects and world religions, the emphasis is on doctrine and orthodox theology. Some chapters, however, may not completely align with the needs of Catholic and Orthodox churches. But the authors’ leanings are muted enough and do not detract from the work’s usefulness. As a resource, it’s well organized, inviting and visually stimulating. Even the most seasoned reader will learn something while browsing.
Worthwhile reference stuffed with facts and illustrations.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2005
ISBN: 978-1-5963-6022-8
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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