A memoir, rich as a Rockefeller, that should fire up historians, pundits, and commentators: every page raises unanswered...
Mild-mannered plutocrat recalls some excellent adventures in a temperate, often candid text.
Born 87 years ago in the largest private house in New York, Rockefeller evinces much respect for grandfather John D., the muckrakers’ perennial target. (“It was a different world then,” he writes of Standard Oil’s monopolistic practices.) Father John Jr., an earnest philanthropist with whom David exchanged letters even while they were in the same house, earned even more respect from his son who, ever mindful of his responsibilities, studied assiduously at Harvard and the London School of Economics. After wartime service as an intelligence officer and a stint as acolyte to Mayor LaGuardia, David became a banker and for a while rode the subway daily to Chase Bank—never owned or controlled by the family, he asserts, though Father was its largest shareholder. Much of this account deals with David’s career at Chase, which he transformed into an international presence. Credit him with reviving downtown Manhattan through the construction of Chase Plaza. From his 17th-floor office there or in Rockefeller Center’s Room 5600, he dealt with the world’s movers and shakers, networking at the highest levels in Russia, China, Latin America, and the Middle East. Though never seeking or accepting public office, Rockefeller founded and served on numerous boards and agencies. He did indeed start the Trilateral Commission, enlisting Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter, and others; conspiracy theorists may make what they will of his admission to being an “internationalist.” Also discussed: Rockefeller Center’s short tenure with Japanese owners, the work of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, diverse siblings (big brother Nelson emerges as a charismatic bully), and the troublesome younger generation. His lengthy text is perhaps self-serving, but such is the nature of autobiography.
A memoir, rich as a Rockefeller, that should fire up historians, pundits, and commentators: every page raises unanswered questions about a remarkable life. (Photo insert, not seen)Pub Date: Oct. 22, 2002
ISBN: 0-679-40588-7
Page Count: 784
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2002
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
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
