A perfect choice for readers who love English history, especially the Stuart period.
A history of a regicide plot against James I (1566-1625).
Though the book may seem like just another history of an English king, Woolley (Savage Kingdom: The True Story of Jamestown, 1607, and the Settlement of America, 2007, etc.) packs the narrative with the kind of interesting tidbits that textbooks often leave out. James I was England’s first Stuart king, succeeding his cousin Elizabeth I. His childhood in Scotland was poor and often threatened, so to suddenly become king was a pleasant shock. He always had a weakness for favorites, beginning in his youth with this cousin Esmé Stuart. Robert Carr enjoyed James’ favor until the king took notice of a young cupbearer, George Villiers. A group formed at Bayard’s Castle worked hard to find George a position for the king, little knowing they were giving up the devil they knew for one much worse. Mentored by Francis Bacon, George became the king’s emotional, political, and sexual friend. James gifted countless positions, lands, and titles to George. As James’ son, Charles, grew to adulthood, the rivalry between him and George looked like it was going to cause trouble, but the king ended up the loser in that relationship. It was George who accompanied Charles in his secret adventure to woo the Spanish princess. The match of Catholic Spain to strongly Protestant England was unpopular at best. The Spanish support for its allies' seizing the Palatinate from James’ son was sufficient enough to provoke war. The adventure was a complete failure, though, as Charles was discovered. The wedding never took place, but the ties between George and Charles were fixed. The author notes how the pair excluded the king, who ignored his duties and became resentful, paranoid, hostile, and awkward toward them. The king’s death from malaria was always thought to be natural, but Woolley has an entirely new, riveting tale to tell.
A perfect choice for readers who love English history, especially the Stuart period.Pub Date: July 17, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-250-12503-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: April 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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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