Moore’s madcap vibrancy and zest for outdoor life permeate this unpretentious chronicle.
The NESN/ESPN personality chronicles his rise from penury to the big (well, bigger) time as host of two top-rated fishing programs.
Moore and his four siblings were raised in rural Massachusetts by a doting mother and a competitive, Civil War–obsessed father. (Family vacations were spent touring historic battlefields.) Exuberant and acquisitive from an early age, young Charlie owned a brand-new Corvette at 18 and married high-school sweetheart Angela at 20. Virtually broke, the couple temporarily moved in with Angela’s parents…and stayed several years. With two kids and another on the way, Moore was bounced by his father from the family cigar store and tried unsuccessfully to open a bait shop. At this lowest of low points, he put his “people person” skills to good use and pitched himself as a fishing expert to the brass at New England Sports Network (NESN). They gave him a biweekly five-minute segment on the sports magazine show Front Row, and after some rather wooden initial performances he eventually warmed up enough to let his natural comedic panache, vast knowledge and genuine love of freshwater fishing shine through on camera. He got his own NESN show, Charlie Moore Outdoors, then moved to ESPN for the competition-themed Beat Charlie Moore. Initial reaction to the latter was mixed—Moore’s in-your-face personality wasn’t to everyone’s taste—but visits from a slew of sports and rock celebrities (and a cameo by Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney) beefed up ratings. As well as tracing his personal journey, the dedicated family man imparts sage wisdom on preserving domestic bliss and achieving success (tenacity in both cases). He also catalogues the best ways to cast a line, favorite fishing spots and the contents of his tackle box. The author’s crowning glory, he claims, was being inducted into the New England Sports Museum.
Moore’s madcap vibrancy and zest for outdoor life permeate this unpretentious chronicle.Pub Date: April 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-312-37472-3
Page Count: 240
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2008
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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