Lacks the technical and stylistic sparkle of great popular history, but is nonetheless informative and even provocative.
Charlemagne not only conquered much of Europe but also created the idea of “Europe,” one that has lasted far longer than the empire, which began to fracture soon after his death in 814.
Historian and novelist Wilson (The Uncrowned Kings of England, 2004, etc.) takes us on a ride back into a time that antedates the periods of his previous works by a thousand years. The author has two interests here: to tell the “truth” about the historical Charlemagne (difficult to do with primary texts written by folks not principally interested in fact) and to examine how his life has affected ensuing western history. The author does a solid job of the former, peeling away layers of mythology from the biography (there are some good passages about The Song of Roland) and revealing that more than a thousand spurious stories have been published about the emperor. Wilson shows a paradoxical Charlemagne, a Christian warrior—a man who wished to conquer in the name of the Prince of Peace; who revered both learning and the learned; who wished his vast demesne to be populated by those who embraced the teachings of Jesus; whose two favorite books were the Bible and Augustine’s City of God; yet a man whose coevals respected and feared him for his military prowess. Charlemagne dies on page 130 (simple pleurisy felled the emperor), and Wilson devotes the rest of his text to his examination of Charles’ enduring influence. We follow him through the Reformation and Renaissance; we see parallels in the lives of Louis XIV and Napoleon; we see his resurrection in the vile mind of Hitler. And—finally—we recognize his desire to unify in the formation of the European Economic Community. Many useful maps appear throughout to help readers visualize the story.
Lacks the technical and stylistic sparkle of great popular history, but is nonetheless informative and even provocative.Pub Date: June 6, 2006
ISBN: 0-385-51670-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2006
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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