JUST GETTING STARTED

Name: JUST GETTING STARTED
Author: Tony Bennett
ISBN: 978-0-06-247677-7

by Tony Bennett with Scott Simon ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 15, 2016

In the past decade, Bennett has been experiencing a renaissance among listeners. Many of them should be happy to hear how he...

bookshelf

The nonagenarian singer expresses his gratitude to many of the people who have helped him along the way.

With the help of NPR host Simon, Bennett presents not so much a memoir as a collection of sweet, uplifting tributes to people ranging from Abraham Lincoln to Lady Gaga as well as places, including Astoria in Queens, New York; the small town of Pyrites in upstate New York; and, of course, San Francisco, where Bennett famously left his heart. Each chapter concludes with a lesson the author has learned or a bit of wisdom gained from the subject of the chapter. Duke Ellington taught him never to worry “about going into or out of style,” and Lena Horne’s resilience made him think, “when life sends you difficulties or misfortunes, don’t get mad or sad—get busy.” From both Fred Astaire, who “used to float past” Bennett’s house on his regular morning walk, and Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, the singer learned the same lesson: trim your work down to its essence. His own chapters are neat and modest. If they don’t tell readers much about Bennett’s inner life, home life, or any turmoil he might have experienced over the decades, they do paint miniportraits of many of the people who helped him on his path. Many of them, as might be expected, are musicians or songwriters, like Amy Winehouse, whose death he laments, and Ella Fitzgerald, whose albums provide a “purely joyful experience.” The author also salutes family members, like his father, who died when Bennett was 10, and painters such as Picasso and John Singer Sargent. The volume is illustrated with small reproductions of many of Bennett’s paintings, which he signs with his birth name, Anthony Benedetto.

In the past decade, Bennett has been experiencing a renaissance among listeners. Many of them should be happy to hear how he got to this point.

Pub Date: Nov. 15, 2016

ISBN: 978-0-06-247677-7

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: Oct. 4, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2016

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | ENTERTAINMENT, SPORTS & CELEBRITY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

bookshelf

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.

bookshelf

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

bookshelf

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...

bookshelf

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)