An absolute must for any Star Trek fan.
“Boldly go where no man has gone before”: the oral history of the Star Trek franchise.
Gross (Voices from Krypton: Superman on Film and in Comics, 2015, etc.) and Altman, a writer and producer, have done yeoman’s work selecting and chronologically arranging this massive compendium of hundreds of comments from over 200 actors, directors, writers and producers involved in creating Star Trek—a “franchise that has literally changed the world,” as Seth MacFarlane, who played Ensign Rivers of the first Starship Enterprise, proclaims in his foreword. The authors’ goal was to “tell the real history of Star Trek in a way that no one else would be able to.” As readers learn, it almost didn’t happen. Studios passed on Gene Roddenberry’s pilot script, and Desilu Productions executives would have if Lucille Ball hadn’t greenlighted it. Roddenberry had written some Have Gun—Will Travel scripts, and he specifically drew on Paladin’s passion, intelligence, and bleeding heart to provide Kirk, Spock, and McCoy with their major personality traits. Roddenberry was a Navy pilot in World War II and was “particularly fascinated by the story of the Enterprise…and wanted to use the name.” The original show lasted three seasons, until 1969. There would eventually be four live action spin-offs (e.g., The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine) and an animated series, the latter of which was produced before Star Trek became a big budget motion picture. Leonard Nimoy said of that film, it was a “trial for the actors.” James Doohan (Scotty) said it was “boring.” The reviews were harsh, but the fans loved it. This volume ends with Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. Some quotes are just lame, while others are priceless. The editors have written numerous notes, providing solid context to quotes and historical background information. The book warmly invites jumping in anywhere to just sample, but it’s best approached from the beginning to hear from those in the know how the phenomenon unfolded.
An absolute must for any Star Trek fan.Pub Date: June 28, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-250-06584-1
Page Count: 576
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2016
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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