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MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.

A KING FAMILY TRIBUTE

This attractive title is infused with a dominant aura of faith and devotion to God’s work; it should be useful in Sunday...

Family and friends remember Dr. King as a role model and dedicate themselves to his mission.

Watkins, Dr. King’s niece, has assembled their writings and excerpts from their speeches. All pay tribute to his spirit, abiding faith and dedication to the cause of civil rights, and they affirm their own commitment to “following the path he walked,” as his nephew, Derek B. King, states. King’s father’s remarks are excerpted from his autobiography. The chapter for Dr. King’s mother quotes from and reproduces a loving letter he wrote to her in 1948. There is no entry from Coretta Scott King. Those who knew him personally consistently refer to him as playful, loving and caring. This is, however, not a biography; his campaign for civil rights is not specifically detailed, nor is there any discussion of his assassination or funeral. Similarly, the many handsomely reproduced and arranged photographs depict the Kings at family events and gatherings. The concluding chapter showcases the Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial on the National Mall.

This attractive title is infused with a dominant aura of faith and devotion to God’s work; it should be useful in Sunday school settings and as a pictorial supplement. (foreword by Andrew Young, afterword of beatitudes, brief biographies of contributors, index) (Essays. 12-18)

Pub Date: Jan. 8, 2013

ISBN: 978-1-4197-0269-3

Page Count: 96

Publisher: Abrams

Review Posted Online: Nov. 30, 2012

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2012

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NIGHT

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. 

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.

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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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

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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