A thoroughly researched biography, if a tad tendentious.
An admiring biography of Francis Marion (1732-1795), a military hero of the American Revolution.
As Oller (American Queen: The Rise and Fall of Kate Chase Sprague—Civil War "Belle of the North" and Gilded Age Woman of Scandal, 2013, etc.) notes, readers of a certain age will remember Marion, the “Swamp Fox,” as the subject of a Disney TV series that ran from 1959 to 1961, and he also reminds us that the 2000 Mel Gibson film, The Patriot, was based loosely on Marion’s exploits. The author’s strategy is conventional and chronological. He acknowledges the difficulty of separating fact from legend in Marion’s case, but the author is resolute. He teaches us about Marion’s family (he did not marry until after the war) and the determination of the British to employ a Southern strategy as the war progressed. A slaveholder in South Carolina, he became a militia leader and quickly established himself as a slippery foe, one who, the author declares, borrowed from the guerrilla tactics of the Cherokee, whom he’d fought earlier. Oller takes us through each of the two dozen or so of Marion’s engagements, virtually all of which were successful; sometimes the detail is daunting, but the maps help clarify matters. Oller shows us a man who was a stickler for discipline but who also refused to allow his men to plunder and commit other overly punitive acts. We meet, as well, his military supporters and antagonists—Nathanael Greene among the former, Thomas Sumter among the latter. Oller is generous in his praise for Marion—his efforts did thwart the Southern strategy—but he seems a bit uncomfortable discussing the Swamp Fox as a slave owner. Although the author periodically alludes to slavery, he does not discuss it in much detail until the final pages, where he states it’s “safe to assume [Marion] was not a cruel master.”
A thoroughly researched biography, if a tad tendentious.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-306-82457-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Da Capo
Review Posted Online: Sept. 7, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2016
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
