A sensitive and thoughtful take on a much-loved song.
British music writer Turner (Trouble Man, 2000, etc.) pens an informative biography of the man who wrote “Amazing Grace” and a comprehensive chronicle of the hymn’s journey to cultural iconhood.
Born in 1725 in London, the son of a prosperous sea captain, John Newton had a rebellious nature that in his youth warred with his religious impulses. Press-ganged into the service of the Royal Navy, he deserted, was found, beaten, and returned to the ship, which then set sail for West Africa. There, Newton left the ship to work for a slave trader on Plantain Island. It was a miserable existence: the food was bad, the climate awful, and his employers tough. But Newton as yet had no sympathy for the plight of the slaves themselves; Turner suggests that his guilt about being involved in the slave trade came long after the 1748 storm at sea during which Newton encountered God’s grace, soon to be immortalized in his hymn. Determined to change his life, he left the sea and became a minister. Back in England, he preached, wrote hymns, and became the confidant of such luminaries as Lord Dartmouth (after whom the American college is named); the poet William Cowper; and British abolitionist William Wilberforce. “Amazing Grace” appeared in hymnals during Newton’s life and then made its way to the US, where it became a staple at revival meetings. Turner traces its earliest published American appearance, the origin of the tune that would be associated with it, and its growing audience. He shows the hymn being played by pipe bands at funerals, recorded by musicians as different as Mahalia Jackson and Sinead O’Connor, and sung at a London rock festival to celebrate Nelson Mandela’s release from jail. He also details the influence of versions by Judy Collins, Aretha Franklin, and the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards Pipe Band.
A sensitive and thoughtful take on a much-loved song.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-06-000218-2
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
An engrossing, intense, and highly descriptive narrative chronicling the ghastly conditions three pregnant women suffered...
The incredible true story of three Jewish women who survived the Holocaust.
Priska, Rachel, and Anka were married Jewish women in their early 20s when the Nazis took control of Europe. Like millions of other Jews, they were forced to give up their normal lives, all of their belongings, and their homes. Shuttled into ghettos and then off to one of the most notorious camps, Auschwitz II-Birkenau, they suffered through the Nazis’ increasing atrocities. But these three women all held a secret: they were pregnant. They were moved from Auschwitz and ended up in Mauthausen, another notorious death camp. With facing the most horrible conditions imaginable, all three gave birth right before the Allies accepted Germany’s surrender. In this meticulously detailed account, Holden (Haatchi & Little B: The Inspiring True Story of One Boy and His Dog, 2014, etc.) compiles an enormous amount of information from interviews, letters, historical records, and personal visits to the sites where this story unfolded. The graphic history places readers in the moment and provides a sense of the enduring power of love that Priska, Rachel, and Anka had for their unborn children and for the husbands they so desperately hoped to see after the war. Even though it occurred more than 70 years ago, the story’s truth is so chillingly portrayed that it seems as if it could have happened recently. These three women and their infants survived in the face of death, and, Holden writes, “their babies went on to have babies of their own and create a second and then a third generation, all of whom continue to live their lives in defiance of Hitler’s plan to erase them from history and from memory.”
An engrossing, intense, and highly descriptive narrative chronicling the ghastly conditions three pregnant women suffered through at the hands of the Nazis.Pub Date: May 5, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-237025-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2015
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