A refreshingly pleasant addition to the journals of self-discovery, with a timely focus on ecological stewardship.
The CEO of a corporation and his family take a sabbatical from a hectic life in New York City and head to Bali to recharge and reconnect.
In his debut memoir, Feder shares an adventure many dream about. It began when he was at a career high point. His wife, Victoria, managed a thriving community center and a preschool she had founded. Their four children were attending a competitive private school. Everybody was overscheduled, living in his or her own world. They needed a break from their safe bubble. Once Feder agreed to take a temporary respite from the breathless, goal-driven pace that had begun to define him, he found himself realizing “that constantly striving to get ahead over the years slowly gnawed at a more humanistic set of values. Outwardly, I maintained a firm position, but I felt the edge had already begun to come off.” After many months of careful preparation, Feder and his family left New York in a December snowstorm and headed to Tanzania, where they spent two weeks on a safari before heading for their reprieve in Bali. The children were enrolled for the spring semester in Bali’s Green School, established by a Canadian expatriate: “The school’s mission statement talked about joy, leadership, and teaching kids to be global citizens.” Feder challenged himself physically through mountain biking and spiritually through yoga, meditation, and drawing. Although occasionally the narrative has the dispassionate tone of a genial tour guide, there are strong moments when the author reveals the excitement of unlocking a new way of experiencing the world: “My drawing opened up a new dimension of travel for me. Spending an hour or so truly observing an image and perceiving the lines, edges, shadows, and perspectives was an unimaginable luxury. I then chose to turn those perceptions into drawings because I would add something of myself to the image, an expression that was personal and unique.” The text bogs down in details of mastering the complexities of yoga exercises, but Feder’s self-deprecating humor remains charming throughout.
A refreshingly pleasant addition to the journals of self-discovery, with a timely focus on ecological stewardship.Pub Date: April 11, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-63576-367-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Radius Book Group
Review Posted Online: March 27, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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