A short biography, but one no less satisfying for the wide-ranging erudition Ackroyd brings to the task.
An acutely limned miniature of J.M.W. Turner (1775–51), whose watercolors, engravings and spectacular oils mark him as England's greatest painter of air, earth and water.
Whether the culmination of the Romantic period or the harbinger of Cézanne and van Gogh and all we’ve come to call modern, Turner invented a new pictorial language that baffled contemporaries—except, perhaps, for the preternaturally incisive John Ruskin. Ackroyd (Chaucer, 2005, etc.) comments smartly on the art but focuses on the man, a genius peculiar to London, comparable to Blake, Hogarth and Dickens. Descended from a line of barbers and butchers (his mother was committed to an insane asylum) and raised amid the clamor of Covent Garden, Turner escaped anonymity through his father's encouragement, his talent and his unremitting hard work. Elected to the Royal Academy at an astonishingly young age, he conducted most of his career as England's best known and best paid painter. An awkward poet, a halting public speaker, an avid angler and sailor, Turner was highly secretive and protective of his work. He traveled widely throughout Britain and the continent, admiring particularly the charms of Venice and the canvasses of Rembrandt, Canaletto and, above all, Claude Lorrain. Taciturn and brusque, he single-mindedly pursued his art and reserved any affability for small children and a few close patrons. On the condition his paintings be kept together, he willed a large portion of his work to the nation, and today the shipwrecks, fires, storms and atmospheric chaos Turner so brilliantly captured constitute the chief ornament of London's Tate Gallery.
A short biography, but one no less satisfying for the wide-ranging erudition Ackroyd brings to the task.Pub Date: Jan. 17, 2006
ISBN: 0-385-50798-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2005
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
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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