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HUSTLING HITLER

Name: HUSTLING HITLER
Author: Walter Shapiro
ISBN: 978-0-399-16147-6

THE JEWISH VAUDEVILLIAN WHO FOOLED THE FÜHRER

by Walter Shapiro ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 14, 2016

An intermittently interesting look at a character who was undoubtedly raw material for Ring Lardner and Damon Runyon.

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The tale of Freeman Bernstein, a Broadway grifter who scammed Nazi officials on the eve of World War II.

Roll Call columnist Shapiro (One-Car Caravan: On the Road with the 2004 Democrats Before America Tunes In, 2003), Bernstein’s great-nephew, first heard of his relative’s coup as a bit of family lore. Research proved it to be the capstone of a long career of dirty deals, including bankruptcies, jail time in at least two countries, and many unpaid bills. Born in upstate New York in 1873, Bernstein was the son of Polish Jews who came to the U.S. five years earlier. His first scrape with the law came at age 13, when he was nabbed for lifting $10 from a swimmer’s unguarded pants. Freed on a technicality, he took the lesson that there’s always a way to beat the law. A long string of scams and scuffles followed. He gravitated to the horseplayers and sharpers of the Saratoga racing season and took to booking acts in local burlesque theaters. He soon developed a reputation for stiffing the performers, and he became a well-known Broadway character, with frequent appearances in the pages of Variety. A bright spot was his marriage to May Ward, a minor vaudeville star whose taste for the finer things of life matched Bernstein’s. Shapiro chronicles Bernstein’s career in depth, thanks in part to his frequent mentions in Variety. But after a while, Bernstein’s exploits lose appeal; few of the ways to stiff the innocent inspire admiration. Shapiro deploys a wise-guy style reminiscent of the showbiz columnists of Bernstein’s heyday, but this also wears thin. Reader interest is kept alive awaiting Bernstein’s crowning coup: bilking the Nazis by delivering scrap metal instead of the valuable nickel they paid for. Occasional glimpses of better-known showbiz figures provide color—Bernstein crossed paths with Mae West, Will Rogers, Sophie Tucker, and other real stars of the era—but nothing can really make Bernstein himself likable.

An intermittently interesting look at a character who was undoubtedly raw material for Ring Lardner and Damon Runyon.

Pub Date: June 14, 2016

ISBN: 978-0-399-16147-6

Page Count: 432

Publisher: Blue Rider Press

Review Posted Online: April 29, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016

Categories:

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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.

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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

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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...

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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)