Edward Pellew was “the First Seaman of the Age.” Taylor illuminates his extraordinary life, and the book is especially vivid...
In a biography of Edward Pellew (1757–1833), the legendary British captain, Taylor (Storm and Conquest: The Clash of Empires in the Eastern Seas, 1809, 2008) demonstrates his commanding knowledge of naval history, especially during the late-18th and early-19th centuries, a period of some of the greatest battles on the seas.
The author’s research went far beyond the Admiralty archives to an old barn with a trunk full of notes written by Pellew’s son. This story is all the more remarkable because of Pellew’s meteoric rise to midshipman within four years and his first command by age 25. Rare in a seaman, he could swim and more than once dove into the sea to save a crewmember, and his physical prowess (“tall, broad, keen-eyed, animated and beaming, master of the quarterdeck and athlete of the tops”) was the stuff of legend. Rather than just a long list of Pellew’s achievements, the author provides a detailed picture of life at sea during wars in America, the English Channel, the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean. His captaincy of the Indefatigable established his position as a master of single-ship command with the expert crew he built of men from his native Cornwall. While Pellew gained fame and considerable fortune, he was derided as a “tarpaulin officer” rather than a gentleman. Still, letters from his colleagues, comrades and notably from defeated enemies testify to his strength of character and sense of responsibility and fairness. During a lull in the Napoleonic War, he stood for Parliament, although he only delivered one speech, assuring the members that, from his experience in the Channel, England’s waters were secure.
Edward Pellew was “the First Seaman of the Age.” Taylor illuminates his extraordinary life, and the book is especially vivid and enlightening to landlubbers who don’t know a hawser from a yardarm.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-393-07164-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: July 29, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2012
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
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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