by Wayne Luckmann ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 2, 2018
Vivid, emotive writing that opens a doorway to a bygone era.
A writer recalls the street life and families of Milwaukee’s South Side in this memoir.
Luckmann (Northwest Passage, 2018, etc.) lived most of his early years within the boundaries of Milwaukee’s South Side “German-Polish ghetto.” The book opens with a beautiful portrait of city life in the 1930s and ’40s, as remembered through a child’s eyes. The author describes the “fleeting passage” of the trolley car with its “ghostly passengers,” men dressed in “suits and ties and fedora hats,” women with a “full pompadour hair style,” and the variety of three-story brick establishments spread along 16th Street, like “the famous Heller’s Hat Shop and Haberdashery.” Luckmann recounts some unfortunate childhood mishaps, such as falling on the 22nd Street Hill in winter and finding his hands frozen to the sidewalk, and suffering a broken leg after being struck by a car while crossing Greenfield Avenue. The author also offers detailed portraits of those living close by, like Mrs. Frass, the “rich fragrances and aromas” of whose cooking seem to waft tantalizingly from the page. As the evocative memoir develops, Luckmann’s focus shifts to domestic politics, recalling such events as his father’s ejection from the family home by his own wife. In the midst of a heated argument, his father yells ruefully: “Ed’s the cause of this, isn’t he? We were all right till he came!”—laying the blame at the feet of her new beau. This is the work of an acutely observant, perspicacious writer who captures the hubbub of South Side street life and the volatility of family dynamics existing behind closed doors with equal vigor. The author’s one minor shortcoming is a tendency toward grandiloquence, which can prove wearisome: “One motive for these recollections is to snare in words as best I can these fleeing moments preserving them, perhaps, for just a bit longer while our home star still casts its light and livable warmth on our pale blue dot lost in the dark cosmic night.” Still, illustrated with family photographs throughout, this book remains a captivating read and a valuable document for anyone wishing to visit the streets and households of Milwaukee’s old South Side.
Vivid, emotive writing that opens a doorway to a bygone era.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2018
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 267
Publisher: Time Tunnel Media
Review Posted Online: Dec. 25, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Joan Luckmann ; edited by Wayne Luckmann
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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by Daniel Kahneman ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 2011
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
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