A slightly odd but ultimately very satisfying biography of a man who, in terms of political and historical impact, has been called ``the dominant writer of this century.'' George Kennan described The Gulag Archipelago as ``the most powerful single indictment of a political regime ever to be levelled in modern times.'' The irony is that the indictment came not from the West, but from a heroic survivor of the Gulag. It is the particular merit of this book that it shows such an understanding of the qualities that were required to survive the camps, to write with such demonic intensity, to fight against the constant threats and surveillance of the KGB, and to make no compromises with the truth. He and his wife solemnly agreed that they were prepared to sacrifice their own lives and those of their children, rather than betray what he had written. Such a man, as the noted novelist Thomas (The White Hotel, 1981; Lady with a Laptop, 1996; etc.) writes with delicate irony, ``could not also be your clubbable nice guy from next door.'' Without stinting the importance of what Solzhenitsyn did, Thomas gives a just appraisal of the human cost to those with whom he worked, particularly his first wife, of that total dedication. He also brings up-to-date the incomparable 1984 biography by Michael Scammell, and through interviews with Solzhenitsyn's first wife and access to material that has recently become available, including KGB files and debates in the Politburo, adds new and important material. The value of the book is lessened, however, by its heavy reliance on Scammell, its occasional ``imagined'' scenes and its crude Freudian analogies (Solzhenitsyn's supposedly ``anal'' temperament). Somewhat overwritten at the start (Dzerzhinsky, the first head of the Cheka, is described as ``goatee-bearded El Greco of terror, death's Stakhanovite''), it becomes simpler and better written as it goes on. A sympathetic and judicious appraisal that will deepen the understanding of this remarkable man.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-312-18036-5
Page Count: 564
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1997
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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