by William Berger ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 8, 2005
On virtually every page is something to learn, something to remember, something to smooth the fur or raise the hackles—or...
An idiosyncratic source book on Giacomo Puccini (1858–1924).
Berger’s third installment in his series on significant opera composers (Verdi with a Vengeance, 2000, etc.) follows the same general intent as previous editions: Cram between the covers as much fact and judgment and even attitude as the market will bear. Here Berger includes an artistic apologia, a biography, a summary and analysis of the operas, descriptions of productions, a sketch of the composer’s place in popular culture and a list and critique of audio and video recordings. There is no gainsaying Berger’s mastery of his subject—or the vast dimensions of his research. He teaches in a patient, if at times tendentious, way. He makes few assumptions about his readers’ musical knowledge and in most cases eschews hyper-technical explanations of Puccini’s craft and art. Throughout, he employs allusions to popular culture (hoping to attract general readers?). The Beatles, Courtney Love, Cecil B. DeMille, the Seven Dwarves and Wile E. Coyote all make unexpected cameos. Berger instructs (in Turandot, the final syllable is pronounced doat), entertains (he describes a production of Madama Butterfly that ended with the detonation of an A-bomb) and amuses (Puccini wrote to his sister that comely American women could “make the Tower of Pisa stand erect”) And everywhere he opines. In Angelica, he says, one character is “perhaps the single biggest bitch in all opera (no mean accomplishment).” General readers will find most useful the swift biography, the summaries and commentaries on the operas and the recordings thereof; many will find merely puzzling (if not narcotizing) a long turgid essay that, among much else, rehashes Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy and its distinction between Apollonian and Dionysian principles. Opera-lovers and aficionados will either love to hate or hate to love this text.
On virtually every page is something to learn, something to remember, something to smooth the fur or raise the hackles—or both.Pub Date: Nov. 8, 2005
ISBN: 1-4000-7778-8
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Vintage
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2005
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by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
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
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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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