A provocative, enlightening, humorous, and impressively executed guide to Amsterdam’s twilight world.
A memoir chronicling the education of a naïve American law school exchange student in Amsterdam in the late 1990s.
In a book that the author describes as part tragicomedy, part “survival guide,” Hollywood entertainment attorney Wienir (Making It on Broadway, 2004, etc.) chronicles his experiences during his third year at the University of California, Berkeley, law school, during which he moved to the Netherlands for a four-month semester. Although the purpose of his sojourn was to get legal experience abroad, Wienir also had intentions to write a book about Amsterdam’s notorious red-light district. He was hoping to dispel widespread misconceptions about it and offer a closer look into the area and its workers. After several weeks of culture shock, he learned a lot more than just the Dutch language. The wonderfully curious author describes the city as a “wonderland” of cannabis coffee shops, bicycle culture, and historical regions. He offers accounts of his adventures attempting to chat up sex workers for his book project (most rejected his offer) and excitedly befriending new drinking buddies. But he also offers astute observations, opinions, and an insider’s perspective on Amsterdam’s city-sanctioned prostitution. He brings his stories of sex workers—such as Emma, with whom he became emotionally connected—to vivid life with recollections of impassioned conversation and well-meaning friendship, and the overall tone never lapses into pity or judgment. Overall, Wienir is a delightfully frank tour guide, uniquely describing the district (including its 10 unspoken “commandments”) and drawing readers deep inside its sexy, neon-lit world. However, this book is not for the timid; the author doesn’t skimp on the details of his subjects’ professional escapades, nor does he underplay the emotional impact of his time in Amsterdam.
A provocative, enlightening, humorous, and impressively executed guide to Amsterdam’s twilight world.Pub Date: May 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9993559-0-9
Page Count: 203
Publisher: De Wallen Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 29, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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