A well-tempered work from whose pages Voltaire gracefully and realistically rises: wiser, more caring and generous, always...
The French philosophe’s ebullient, incredibly productive years in exile, admirably drawn by the London Financial Times’ former foreign-affairs columnist.
Louis XV was not interested in inviting Voltaire back into the Versailles fold when, in 1753, the writer sought to return from Potsdam. So this leading member of the Enlightenment, ever to be an individualist and outsider, settled in Geneva, where he promptly garnered the Calvinist establishment’s censure. Drawing on what he calls Voltaire’s “meta-autobiography,” a luxurious 15,000 letters collected by his executors from across Europe, Davidson above all traces his subject’s moral development. During these years, the writer crusaded against “superstition, theological repression, Jesuits, monks, fanatical regicides, and the Inquisition in every shape.” He wrote the skewering Candide. He became a landowner and gained a measure of appreciation for the everyday suffering of the toilers in his fields at Ferney. Davidson ably tenders the push-pull of Voltaire’s convictions: he campaigned against miscarriages of justice, particularly as they pertained to Christian fanaticism and the repressive alliance between church and state, but he was anti-Semitic and accepted the need for capital punishment and torture. Often seen as a philosophical forerunner of the French Revolution, in fact he condemned the popular voice (“which is almost always absurd”) and firmly believed in the rights and responsibilities of a quasi-feudal order. Overriding these fissures, however, is Voltaire’s sense of tolerance, his witty brevity in writing for the common man, and his willingness to poke a finger in the eye of powermongers. Davidson imbues the Frenchman’s life with the warmth of his personality, detailing his relationship with Mme. Denis, his love of wine and food, and his ongoing affection for the theater, his gardens, and his multitude of acquaintances.
A well-tempered work from whose pages Voltaire gracefully and realistically rises: wiser, more caring and generous, always eloquent as the years gain upon him. (8 pp. b&w illustrations, not seen)Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-8021-1791-0
Page Count: 356
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2004
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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