A charming, but bumpy recollection of a writer’s love of his work.
A memoir recounts a life of tribulations and wordsmithery.
Mach (The Invisible Twins, 2015, etc.) was a precocious youngster, and like so many authors, discovered his love of the written word through voracious reading. He wrote a novel before he even finished high school fashioned in Baroque style (he includes an excerpt), and despite his failure to publish it, a lifetime of devotion to the craft was sparked. Mach received an MBA from the Illinois Institute of Technology, and spent the bulk of his professional career as a market research analyst and business writer. He also tried his hand at several entrepreneurial ventures, and taught advertising and business writing at San Jose State University in California. He experienced some jolts of authorial success—in 1977 he was invited to join the well-regarded California Writer’s Club, and in 1981 he published an article that graced the cover of Writer’s Digest. He trudged through a period of troubles that lasted for nearly 10 years, grappling with serious financial challenges, a cancer scare, his inability to publish a novel he was proud of, and problems finding employment (at one point, he donned a Santa Claus outfit for money). He clashed with a business partner (he briefly owned and operated an ice cream business), and was sued for a substantial sum. All the while, Mach discusses his experiences as creative fodder for future writing, always mining his life for inspiration. His prospects eventually improved, and he found both solace and guidance in religion, not to mention some success as an indie author. This is a quirky and sometimes meandering remembrance, and bears the stamp of a business writer; Mach loves to include bullet-pointed lists cataloging everything from his personal trials to the market research projects he’s written. Mach, a prolific author, lists and excerpts his own work liberally. Unfortunately, the writing, especially for an author’s recollection, is uneven at best. Mach recalls teaching a writing seminar: “I showed attendees how to open up their creative channels so they can come up with methods for sparking new ways to thinking about their writing—whether it be a novel, article, or advertising copy.” In addition, Mach’s account is too idiosyncratic and personal to be of universal import; its primary value will be to those who know and love him.
A charming, but bumpy recollection of a writer’s love of his work.Pub Date: May 5, 2016
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 290
Publisher: Hill Song Press
Review Posted Online: June 10, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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 Yorker staff 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
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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