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GEORGE IV

Name: GEORGE IV
Author: Steven Parissien
ISBN: 0-312-28402-0

INSPIRATION OF THE REGENCY

by Steven Parissien ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 15, 2002

A worthy entry to the literature devoted to the Regency.

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An unflattering portrait of the early-19th-century British monarch.

George, son of the Hanoverian king George III, was “witty, foppish and extravagant,” devoting his considerable energies to affairs of the bedroom rather than to affairs of state, firmly convinced of his brilliance and infallibility—and, royal-watcher Parissien writes, perhaps not a little loony, the victim of the porphyritic illness that had stricken his father (and inspired Alan Bennett’s play The Madness of King George). For his troubles, writes Parissien (Paul Mellon Center for the Study of British Art/Yale Univ.), George IV earned a place as “the most caricatured monarch in British history.” Satirists had much to work with: George was fond of second-tier Northern European art; collected castles and palaces, spending whole fortunes on restoring and redecorating them; liked to dress up in military garb and, furthermore, believed himself to have been present at battles against Napoleon when he in fact had been safe at home. Though his faults may have been forgivable and, considering the history of the British monarchy, not so terrible, George’s biggest offense may have been to believe his own press and to have offended English sensibilities with “blatant self-promotion.” Mostly he emerges from Parissien’s pages as clueless, not evil; readers may themselves be forgiven for extending to the poor man a few sympathies, especially after seeing how the likes of Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and even Jane Austen rebuffed his offers of patronage (in exchange, one assumes, for a few nice words said about him). Despite his own sympathetic approach, Parissien closes by observing, “George merely succeeded in rendering the monarchy increasingly superfluous to the process of government and the life of the nation.”

A worthy entry to the literature devoted to the Regency.

Pub Date: April 15, 2002

ISBN: 0-312-28402-0

Page Count: 464

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2002

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | HISTORY | POLITICAL & ROYALTY | WORLD | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

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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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INTO THE WILD

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...

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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.

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor will it to readers of Krakauer's narrative. (4 maps) (First printing of 35,000; author tour)