Journalist and former mountain guide Veenhof offers a clearer understanding of the singular man who penetrated the mysteries of Tibetan Buddhism and disseminated the practices to the West.
As the author recounts in this dogged, workmanlike biography, Theos Bernard (1908–1947) learned much of his early study of Tantric Yoga from his father and uncle, Glen and Pierre Bernard, respectively, who had in turn apprenticed under their Lincoln, Neb., neighbor, Sylvais Hamati, an East Indian Vedic guru. While Pierre went on to great fame and riches in the 1920s and ’30s with his Nyack, N.Y., yoga center for the stars—a wild trajectory recently chronicled in Robert Love’s excellent The Great Oom (2010)—Glen traveled to India to study Tantric philosophy, leaving his former wife and son to their own devices in Arizona. A near-death from scarlet fever as an adolescent goaded Theo into mastering yoga practices for health and strength, and after law school he finally met his father and found in him his guru—though Theo never acknowledged him as such. Eventually, Bernard made his way to his uncle’s place Nyack. He began studies in philosophy and anthropology at Columbia University, under Franz Boas, whose “participant observation methodology” Bernard hoped to adapt among the Buddhists in Tibet. Very few Westerners had penetrated Lhasa and its monasteries, and Veenhof, a Buddhist, dwells at great length on Bernard’s extensive 1937 trip, the marvels of which he later publicized in magazine articles, lectures and books such as Penthouse of the Gods (1939). Two visionary institutions organized by him were just getting off the ground in California when he disappeared on a Himalayan trip in 1947. Veenhof does a yeoman’s job of bringing this exalted life back into focus. A useful study, especially considering the enormous growth in interest in Tibetan Buddhism.
Pub Date: May 17, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-385-51432-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Harmony
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2011
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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