The author concludes that “Being an engineer is in fact a lot like being a paperboy,” and by the end, we’re convinced as...
An engineer (Civil Engineering and History/Duke) who has written about pencils, bridges, and other useful things casts a fond—and analytical—look back at his own 1950s youth and once again discovers mystery and magnificence in the mundane.
Petroski (The Book on the Bookshelf, 1999, etc.) begins near his 12th birthday, when he received what he wanted most: a Schwinn. It arrived unassembled, and Petroski’s father (manually challenged) wisely permitted his more skillful son to put it together. The Schwinn would soon carry young Petroski around Queens on a paper route that he kept for the better part of two-and-a-half years—approximately the timeframe for this marvelous memoir. With his fascination for the pragmatic and historical, Petroski lets few things escape his analysis. He relates some of the history of Queens, the system of numbering houses there, the method for adjusting bicycle spokes, the rules of penny-pitching, the history of the Long Island Press (the paper he delivered), the economics of newspaper-delivery, the history of the bicycle, the differences between American Flyer and Lionel trains, the effects of consuming two aspirin with warm Pepsi, the Dodgers’ move from Brooklyn—and so much more. At one point he confesses, “The closer I looked at things, the more complicated they became.” Lucky for us. Petroski pauses to ponder complications and then explain them in a prose so transparent that at times we are barely aware we are reading. Among the treasures: a terrific description of how he folded a newspaper to keep it from flying apart as it soared from his hand to the subscriber’s porch; and a horrifying account of a brutal algebra teacher’s determination (and failure) to break Petroski’s spirit.
The author concludes that “Being an engineer is in fact a lot like being a paperboy,” and by the end, we’re convinced as well that no metaphor for life is more apt than a paper route. (30 b&w photos throughout)Pub Date: April 2, 2002
ISBN: 0-375-41353-7
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2002
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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