An accomplished biography of one of the most important women of 18th- century Britain. Journalist Foreman, whose work is based on her doctoral research at Oxford, has written a lively account of the life and times of Georgiana Cavendish that is also a social history of the British aristocracy in the late 1700s. Born in 1757, Georgiana Spencer married William Cavendish, fifth Duke of Devonshire, a leading Whig aristocrat who never sought nor held high public office. What the taciturn duke lacked in political drive was more than made up for by his ambitious wife. The duchess made their London home, Devonshire House, the center of Whig politics and social life for the last quarter of the 18th century. Although the mores of the time limited any woman’s political role, Georgiana wielded considerable influence with Charles James Fox, Charles Grey, and other Whig politicians of the day. She was the first woman to publicly campaign for a candidate in an election, stumping for Fox in 1784. She was the intermediary in many a brokered deal (e.g., the multiparty coalition that turned out Addington’s government in 1804). The Devonshire House circle set trends in fashion, dance, and games of chance. Georgiana was considered the most captivating society woman of her time, but her life—already complicated by the presence of Lady Elizabeth Foster, her friend and her husband’s mistress, in her household—was darkened further by her addictive gambling, her indiscreet affair with Grey, and the resulting pregnancy. Brian Masters presented a more forgiving view of the mÇnage Ö trois in his Georgiana (1981). But Foreman’s Georgiana is shown in greater detail as a remarkable and intelligent woman whose literary and scientific pursuits were encouraged by the likes of Edward Gibbon. Effortlessly written and scrupulously documented, this will be the standard biography of Georgiana for some time. (16 pages illus., not seen)
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-375-50294-7
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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