A scholarly and comprehensive biography that reconsiders the reputation of King Philip II of Spain (152798). As ruler of the most extensive empire the world had yet seen, Philip II has always been studied exclusively in terms of the political events and foreign policy of his reign. Kamen (Higher Council for Scientific Research, Spain) now offers the first true biography of Philip. The historian draws on new manuscript sources, including Philip's unpublished correspondence, and he emphasizes the part played by the New World in forming Philip's outlook. Emerging from a solitary childhood, which was overshadowed by his remote father, Emperor Charles V, the young Philip was a cultured Renaissance prince: He patronized Titian, took part in medieval jousts, and was caught up in the contemporary nostalgia for chivalry and the legends of King Arthur. His life, however, was to be dominated and shaped by serious problems, mainly springing from the convulsions caused in Europe by the Reformation and by his need as monarch to assert some measure of central control in Spain itself. Kamen explores, for example, the conflicts behind Philip's disastrous policy in the Netherlands and his brief dynastic marriage with England's Queen Mary, his attempt to invade England during the reign of Mary's Protestant successor, Elizabeth, and his interventions to protect the native populations from rapacious colonists in Spanish South America. While Kamen avoids easy revisionism, his Philip comes across as a dutiful and complex man whose freedom was paradoxically limited by his destiny. Deeply religious rather than fanatical, Philip supported the Spanish Inquisition as a matter of course but refused to attack the Jewish Conversos. His present black image, Kamen argues, can be traced to English and Dutch propaganda in the 1580s. Essential reading for all students of the turbulent 16th century. (32 illustrations, not seen) (History Book Club selection)
Pub Date: June 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-300-07081-0
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 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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