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THE LADY CORNARO

Name: THE LADY CORNARO
Author: Jane Howard Guernsey
ISBN: 1-883551-44-7

PRIDE AND PRODIGY OF VENICE

by Jane Howard Guernsey ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 15, 1999

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A praiseworthy if perfunctory biography of Elena Lucrezia Cornaro Piscopia, the “first woman in the world” to receive a university doctorate. Elena Cornaro was not only beautiful, brilliant, and of good family, but chaste, compassionate, generous and so dedicated to her Roman Catholic religious beliefs that she wore a monk’s habit under her elaborate silk gowns. Born in 1646, by the time she was 11 years old, she had learned Latin, Greek, French, and Spanish, and was studying art, music, philosophy, and history. She went on to become proficient in four more languages as well as mathematics, astronomy, and physics. She had also taken vows of chastity that put her in conflict with her father, who wanted her to make an advantageous marriage. They compromised: she would remain a virgin, but give up her dream of entering a convent. He continued to support her studies and frequently showed off her erudition at parties and gatherings of distinguished scholars. Elena’s academic reputation grew until she was recommended as a candidate for a degree at the University of Padua, passing her final exam when she was 30 years old. However, she had punished her health with “extreme penance,” wearing hair shirts and starving herself (a condition called “holy anorexia”), and died at 38. After many funeral honors, she was buried in a chapel in Padua, now called the Cornaro Chapel. In the US, she is venerated by a stained glass window at Vassar College. Unfortunately, very few of Elena’s own writings survived, so freelance writer and editor Guernsey tries to give dimension to Elena’s life by describing her extended family, the tutors and notables who influenced her, as well as depicting life in Venice in the late 17th century. Limited introduction to a woman who is a heroine of Vassar graduates and other women scholars. (55 b&w illustrations)

Pub Date: Sept. 15, 1999

ISBN: 1-883551-44-7

Page Count: 276

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1999

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

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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

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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NIGHT

by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...

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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.

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.