Articulate and clear-eyed, Rosenberg’s memoir memorably records the struggles of a woman determined to be the agent of her...
A political activist from the ’60s through the early ’80s recounts her arduous journey from the FBI’s most-wanted list through a 16-year incarceration in maximum-security prisons.
Rosenberg was radicalized during the antiwar and black-power movements, and eventually went underground in the early ’80s after the FBI indicted her in a robbery-conspiracy case that resulted in the death of several officers. While unloading a vast cache of explosives in a U-haul van to a storage place in New Jersey in 1984, she was arrested and sentenced to 58 years in federal prison. Rosenberg and her partner maintained that they “were part of an organized illegal resistance movement [and] acting out of conscience.” Subsequently, they were treated as terrorists and subjected to the most stringent lock-up conditions in maximum-security prisons across the country. High-profile female political prisoners were unusual in government facilities at the time, and the correctional institution in Tucson, Ariz., housed more than 1,000 men and four women. The women were stuck in segregation with little natural light and few visits from lawyers, and a good part of the memoir discusses the appalling conditions, vindictive officers and clueless bureaucracy. From Tucson, Rosenberg was moved to facilities in Lexington, Ky.; Washington, D.C., where she was indicted on new charges of trying to bomb the U.S. Capitol; Mariana, Fla.; and Danbury, Conn. Her period of incarceration coincided with the burgeoning crack and AIDS epidemic, and Rosenberg became a vociferous advocate and health counselor. She writes movingly of her reconciliation with her parents and last visit to her dying father, as well as relationships made with other women prisoners. While denied parole, she was eventually pardoned by Bill Clinton in 2001.
Articulate and clear-eyed, Rosenberg’s memoir memorably records the struggles of a woman determined to be the agent of her own life.Pub Date: March 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-8065-3304-9
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Citadel/Kensington
Review Posted Online: Dec. 2, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2010
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
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
SEEN & HEARD
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