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A MAN AND HIS SHIP

Name: A MAN AND HIS SHIP
Author: Steven Ujifusa
ISBN: 978-1-4516-4507-1

AMERICA'S GREATEST NAVAL ARCHITECT AND HIS QUEST TO BUILD THE SS UNITED STATES

by Steven Ujifusa ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 10, 2012

Obsessed with ships, Gibbs seems a one-dimensional figure, but Ujifusa concentrates on his career, an excellent decision...

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In his first book, historian Ujifusa delivers a delightful account of the era of grand ocean liners and the brilliant, single-minded designer who yearned to build the greatest ocean liner of all.

Almost entirely self-taught, William Francis Gibbs (1886–1967) grew up reading technical journals and blueprints and designing his own vessels. In 1915, he and his like-minded brother completed plans for the world’s largest and fastest superliner. Amazingly, they persuaded the directors of International Mercantile Marine Company (builder of the Titanic) to finance construction, but World War I halted the project. Setting up his own company in 1922, Gibbs made his name building modest liners for American companies. By this time, large luxury liners required government subsidies, so all of them were European. As World War II loomed, Gibbs became the leading designer for the U.S. Navy and Merchant Marine. It took the Cold War and energetic lobbying to achieve Gibbs’ dream. Agreeing that national defense required the ship as a potential troop carrier, the U.S. paid nearly two-thirds of the construction costs. Launched in 1952 to national acclaim, the SS United States was a technological triumph; rival liners never matched her speed, reliability or safety. Sadly, by the 1960s she was losing money; she retired in 1969.

Obsessed with ships, Gibbs seems a one-dimensional figure, but Ujifusa concentrates on his career, an excellent decision that results in a vivid account of the business, politics and technical details surrounding transatlantic travel in that time period.

Pub Date: July 10, 2012

ISBN: 978-1-4516-4507-1

Page Count: 464

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: May 6, 2012

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2012

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | HISTORY | SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY | MILITARY

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by Steven Ujifusa

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BARONS OF THE SEA
by Steven Ujifusa

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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)