By all rights, this should be the stuff of epic, but many readers are likely to be left cold.
Disappointing account of the first two-woman expedition across Antarctica, as told by the participants.
Former schoolteachers Bancroft and Arnesen both had extensive outdoor experience, including previous Antarctic trips, before they teamed up for their joint adventure. As quickly becomes clear, Antarctic exploration is no game for dilettantes or amateurs. When she recruited Arnesen, a Norwegian who had skied alone to the South Pole and across Greenland, Bancroft had already put together a team to line up corporate sponsorship and to negotiate the various governmental and other hurdles any would-be visitor to the southernmost continent must deal with. The expedition’s troubles began when the airline contracted to fly the two women to their starting point raised its price; ultimately, they arrived some two weeks late. Once on the ice, they faced a string of hardships and near-disasters. Bancroft injured a shoulder attempting to handle the sails they used to pull themselves and their sleds over the ice. An emergency signal went out without their knowledge, almost resulting in a rescue plane being sent. At the same time, they traveled with satellite phones, laptop computers, and the latest high-tech cold-weather gear (listed by brand name in an appendix). In the end, hard work and sheer stubbornness got them across the continent in a journey they saw as an inspiration for women and for the disadvantaged everywhere, even though they fell short of the coastline. Alternating their accounts with summaries by Dahle, the explorers do their best to conjure up their experience for stay-at-home readers. Unfortunately, the few moments of drama seem insufficient payoff for their ordeal.
By all rights, this should be the stuff of epic, but many readers are likely to be left cold.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-7382-0794-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Da Capo
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2003
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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