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ELIZABETH OF YORK

Name: ELIZABETH OF YORK
Author: Alison Weir
ISBN: 978-0-345-52136-1

A TUDOR QUEEN AND HER WORLD

by Alison Weir ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 3, 2013

Admitting that she was not a dynamic figure, Weir portrays Elizabeth as a passive observer or victim and often ignores her...

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Prolific, best-selling author Weir (Mary Boleyn: Mistress of Kings, 2011, etc.), who specializes in female royalty, presents another popular biography, a serious work definitely not aimed at a bodice-ripper audience.

This Tudor Elizabeth (1466–1503) lived a century before her much better-known granddaughter, but she was important: the daughter, wife and mother of kings, including Henry VIII. England’s bloody War of the Roses seemed to end in 1461 when Edward of York defeated his Lancastrian enemies and took the throne as Edward IV. This proved illusory when he offended powerful allies by marrying an obscure subject, Elizabeth Woodville, and promoting her family. When he died in 1483, no law prevented Edward’s 12-year-old firstborn, Elizabeth of York, from inheriting the throne, but no one considered women fit to govern if men with reasonable claims could be found. There were plenty at the time—and none a century later when Henry VIII’s son died, allowing his sisters, Mary and Elizabeth I, to rule. There followed two chaotic years during which her uncle, the Duke of York, murdered Edward’s two sons, threatened his widow and daughters, seized power as Richard III, and fended off rivals until killed in battle in 1485 by Henry Tudor, who married Elizabeth, uniting two families whose factions had fought bitterly for 50 years and launching the modern British monarchy as Henry VII. “Elizabeth of York’s role in history was crucial,” writes the author, “although in a less chauvinistic age it would, by right, have been more so.”

Admitting that she was not a dynamic figure, Weir portrays Elizabeth as a passive observer or victim and often ignores her entirely as she delivers an intensely researched, opinionated, almost blow-by-blow political history of Britain during the turbulent last half of the 15th century.

Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2013

ISBN: 978-0-345-52136-1

Page Count: 608

Publisher: Ballantine

Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2013

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2013

Categories:

- BOOK REVIEW
THE KING'S PLEASURE
by Alison Weir

- BOOK REVIEW
QUEENS OF THE AGE OF CHIVALRY
by Alison Weir

- BOOK REVIEW
QUEENS OF THE CRUSADES
by Alison Weir

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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.