Bernstein’s decision to filter the broader history of the region through the prism of Hastings’ life results in a narrative...
An odd mix of conversational commentary and detailed historical documentation that presents an account of burgeoning British imperialism in India.
One might wonder how theoretical physicist, mountain climber, and science writer Bernstein (Cranks, Quarks and the Cosmos, 1992, etc.) came to write an 18th-century colonial history. His prologue informs the reader that he stumbled across Hastings’ story while reading regional history in preparation for a trip to (and a subsequent New Yorker story about) mountain climbing in Tibet. Hastings spent most of his life, from his teens on, employed by the British East India Company, rising through its ranks and finally achieving the rank of Governor-General of India. At the pinnacle of his power, he sponsored the development of the first Grammar of the Bengal Language and the first translation into English of the Bhagavadgita. After 12 years as Governor-General, however, he was recalled to Britain in disgrace to face impeachment charges for bribery, corruption, and oppression of the Indian people. The tension generated by these seemingly contradictory historical views of Hastings drives Bernstein’s narrative, which is loaded with excerpts from primary-source documents. The best sections harness these sources to present sparkling and insightful profiles of peripheral figures (such as novelist Fanny Burney). More often, however, these sources strain against the weight of anachronistic colonial and parliamentary contexts. Bernstein’s conversational prose avoids deep analysis of these complex contexts by adopting an apologist’s stance for Hastings—giving the story a novelistic (rather than a historic) feel.
Bernstein’s decision to filter the broader history of the region through the prism of Hastings’ life results in a narrative that lacks objectivity and strains beneath the weight of extensive documentation, but it is still interesting for its entertaining portraits of period figures. (21 b&w photos)Pub Date: May 19, 2000
ISBN: 1-56663-281-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ivan Dee/Rowman & Littlefield
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
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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