Moore further explores his life’s accomplishments and struggles and the everyday significance of “fate and meaning.”
Following a best-selling debut juxtaposing his mentored childhood against that of a ne’er-do-well namesake in Baltimore (The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates, 2010), the author’s second book charts his personal history through active military duty and time on Wall Street. Though a less-charismatic offshoot of that former effort, Moore’s writing remains consistently articulate and escorts readers through a decade of pivotal years when he left his childhood home for academic study at Oxford University in England in 2001, through a data-analysis internship with the Department of Homeland Security and a promising career in investment banking, which he sacrificed for deployment as a soldier in the war in Afghanistan. Moore’s wartime experiences provide a compelling narrative of personal determination and dedication to lead others with strength, yet he also deftly examines his comprehension of the larger impact and ironies of global conflict and American foreign policy. The author continues to chronicle his personal history with an often frustrating stint as a White House Fellow (“[m]oving the deep bureaucracy of lifelong civil servants was more like steering a tanker than a speedboat”), work in finance, and finally as a husband, father, public speaker, entrepreneur and youth advocate. Though the memoir’s timeline meanders and Moore’s sense of focus occasionally drifts, the book is ultimately unified by generous profiles of upstanding “workers” whose consistent acts of youth mentorship, veteran rehabilitation, product development and selfless humanitarianism are remarkable yet often overlooked or underappreciated in contemporary society. The takeaway is crystal clear: Take pride in your endeavors, and make every attempt to discover the “meaning of success in a volatile, difficult, and seemingly anchorless world.”
An inspired story of a passionate American who has delved into a variety of livelihoods and made a distinctive mark on each.Pub Date: Jan. 13, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9357-8
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: Nov. 20, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
Did you like this book?
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
Categories: GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | PHILOSOPHY & RELIGION | PSYCHOLOGY | HISTORICAL & MILITARY
Did you like this book?
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
Categories: BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | HOLOCAUST | HISTORY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL HISTORY
Did you like this book?
© Copyright 2021 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
