A friendly, all-purpose compendium of thought-provoking intellectual odds and ends.
A collection of quotes and inspirational ruminations on all aspects of life.
As its title suggests, Fitzgerald’s well-designed follow-up to his Beyond Chicken Soup (2019) takes its initial cues from Poor Richard’s Almanack, collecting the author’s wisdom and gentle humor on a wide variety of topics ranging from ethics and morality to God to loneliness to sports. The author shifts easily from a tone of jocularity to one of serious concentration and back, and the focus of his meditations likewise shifts. One little segment is an ode to the wonders of “Real books, flesh-and-blood books” (as opposed to electronic books, presumably) while another digs into a gentle indictment of the false nature of consumer culture: “Happiness in our culture is largely fool’s gold peddled by all manner of hucksters and pied pipers, ranging from auto dealers to fast-food purveyors to televangelists.” Some sections use historical grounding to ponder a topic, as when he suggests a “Bill of Responsibilities” to accompany the Bill of Rights with examples like “I will offer forgiveness” and “I will hold myself accountable.” Other sections are composed of quick aphorisms like “What compassion is to kindness, empathy is to civility” or “A leader stands in front of the flag; a politician, behind it.” The rustic simplicity of some of these sentiments stands at odds with the complexity of the issues they raise (many parents, for instance, might take issue with being told “Loving parents are the children of loving parents; like begets like”), but Fitzgerald’s straightforward sincerity is always evident, and the wry, common-sense tone he adapts from Poor Richard works well in modern contexts (“An alarm clock can only wake us; it can’t get us out of bed,” and so on). The tone adopted throughout is that of inviting conversation; readers seeking practical reminders of everyday wisdom will doubtless respond.
A friendly, all-purpose compendium of thought-provoking intellectual odds and ends.Pub Date: Jan. 17, 2019
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Kingsley Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 14, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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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