More likely to make readers petition for a continental name change than sing Vespucci’s praises.
Far from being the innovative navigational genius of legend, Vespucci emerges here as salesman extraordinaire.
Although Fernández-Armesto (History/Tufts; Pathfinders: A Global History of Exploration, 2006, etc.) gallantly attempts to make him appear otherwise, Amerigo Vespucci is the historical equivalent of a great trailer for a lame movie. In summation, he’s an undeniably compelling figure, as evidenced by the book’s opening salvo: “Amerigo Vespucci…was a pimp in his youth and a magus in his maturity.” It’s hard not to be intrigued by a man who was on intimate terms with both Columbus and the Medici family, a man who enjoyed an almost mystical reputation as a navigator. Readers will quickly find, however, that broad descriptions of his exploits are far more compelling than the actual events of his life. Vespucci is a shadowy figure; he left behind little original writing, and a number of works attributed to him are of dubious authenticity. He was also a mercenary hack who sold his services to the highest bidder—though, to be fair, this was no egregious offense at the time. Unlike Columbus, from whom he drew heavily in his descriptions of his voyages and the lands he encountered, Vespucci was a passive traveler, not the commander of an expedition. He claimed expertise with a variety of instruments, but in actuality the showy, authoritative manner he employed when flourishing them in front of bewildered seamen was inversely proportional to his ability to use them correctly. The mapmaker who named South America in Vespucci’s honor later regretted that decision and sought to rechristen it “Terra Incognita”; by then, however, historical inertia had taken hold.
More likely to make readers petition for a continental name change than sing Vespucci’s praises.Pub Date: Aug. 14, 2007
ISBN: 978-1-4000-6281-2
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2007
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
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
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