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HANNIBAL

Name: HANNIBAL
Author: Patrick N. Hunt
ISBN: 978-1-4391-0217-6

by Patrick N. Hunt ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 2017

A thrilling page-turner about one of history’s most brilliant strategists and tacticians.

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An archaeologist and historian shares his vast knowledge of the life of the leader of the second Punic War (213-202 B.C.E.).

Hunt, a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, displays an ability to teach without preaching and entertain without lowering literary standards, making for an exciting biography of one of history’s greatest commanders. Hannibal was the son of Hamilcar Barca, who led the first Punic War and made his son swear an oath to destroy Rome after Carthage was defeated. Hamilcar believed that Carthage, a society dominated by merchants, capitulated much too quickly; it lost its mastery of the seas and monopoly of trade to the Romans and had to pay a large indemnity. Hamilcar was sent to their Spanish holdings to gather that indemnity from the silver mines, and he took his young son with him. There, Hannibal learned the finer arts of war, which he used to cross the Alps and wage more than 15 years of war in Italy. Drawing on the writings of Polybius and the often negative Livy, Hunt makes good use of primary sources. Hannibal surprised his enemies with hidden armies, relied on his spies and on local Celts, and even employed stampeded cattle with burning brush on their horns to destroy armies. Rome was blindsided by the Punic army and defeated in a series of battles, including the infamous Cannae. What Hannibal didn’t understand is that Rome never considered itself defeated, no matter how many losses they suffered. Eventually, there was one Roman, Scipio, who paid attention to his methods, returned to the Fabian method of nonengagement, and mirrored Hannibal’s mastery of deception and psychological warfare. Scipio actually met with Hannibal before their final battle at Zama in 202 and again in his exile—oh, to have been a fly on the wall at that first meeting. Hunt does his best to grant us that wish.

A thrilling page-turner about one of history’s most brilliant strategists and tacticians.

Pub Date: July 11, 2017

ISBN: 978-1-4391-0217-6

Page Count: 416

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: April 29, 2017

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2017

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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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NIGHT

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...

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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.

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.