by Todd McCarthy ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 16, 2007
An entertaining and important look at an often unexamined page in sports history.
Variety film critic McCarthy (Howard Hawks, 1997) highlights women’s roles in the annals of automobile racing.
Formula 1 fans and NASCAR aficionados, as well as those for whom Danica Patrick opened up the world of auto racing, might be shocked to learn that a number of women figured prominently in the sport from its late-19th-century infancy. The heyday for women racers in the U.S., notes the author, came during the 1950s, that notoriously celebrated decade of domesticity. Particularly the years 1953 through 1958 marked what McCarthy calls “a privileged moment in the grand sweep of American automobile racing, a small window of time when the sport was accessible to virtually anyone with a desire to pursue it; if you had a car and were good enough, you could drive it to a track and race. Women included.” While McCarthy spotlights the gossip column–like lives and impressive achievements of Evelyn Mull, Denise McCluggage, Ruth Levy and Mary Davis—all gifted racers of the period—he also frames their triumphs within the broader context of other groundbreaking or just sensational events for women and the car in general. One such moment occurred in June 1909, when Alice Ramsey, a 22-year-old mother from Hackensack, departed New York City in her $1,500 windowless, gas gauge–less, four-cylinder, 30-horsepower Maxwell DA and became the first woman to drive across the continent, arriving in San Francisco almost two months later. Another took place in 1934, when Elfreida Mais decided to attempt a different sort of record by driving her car through a burning wall packed with dynamite; needless to say, this automotive first proved to be her last act. Though somewhat disjointed, McCarthy’s vividly episodic account runs the gamut from behind-the-scenes partying to the fascinating variety of records women attempted, representing not only the obvious tests of speed and distance, but also those of physical endurance.
An entertaining and important look at an often unexamined page in sports history.Pub Date: May 16, 2007
ISBN: 978-1-4013-5202-8
Page Count: 304
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2007
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by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
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
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by Elie Wiesel ; edited by Alan Rosen
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by Elie Wiesel ; illustrated by Mark Podwal
BOOK REVIEW
by Elie Wiesel ; translated by Marion Wiesel
by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 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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