A terrific work, notable for its gravity and humor, scholarship and popular appeal. (Illustrations throughout)
The little-known life of a gifted but cranky associate of Christopher Wren and bitter rival of Isaac Newton.
Jardine’s is the first full-scale portrait since 1956 of the cantankerous Hooke (1635–1703), a member of the Royal Society, co-restorer with Wren of London after the Great Fire of 1666, extraordinarily gifted inventor, designer, builder, artist, and scientist. The author begins with the most controversial of all of Hooke’s professional disputes, his argument with Newton about who should be credited for discovering the inverse square law of gravitational attraction. Hooke clearly had the insight, says Jardine (Renaissance Studies/Queen Mary Univ., London; On a Grander Scale, 2002, etc.), but not the mathematics to prove it, and so he wrote to Newton, who proved the theory and consequently soared into celebrity. Hooke gnashed his teeth publicly and privately for years afterward. The narrative then turns back to Hooke’s boyhood on the Isle of Wight, subsequently moving through his schooling in London and Oxford, his election to the Royal Society in 1663, and his incredibly busy career as an inventor, a presenter of weekly experiments for the edification of Society members, a professor of geometry at Gresham College, a writer, illustrator, experimenter—he enjoyed his tests with cannabis—and advocate for friends trying to publish their own works. Though he had a brief sexual relationship with a servant woman, Hooke never married and died miserably alone. Jardine carefully reconstructs her subject’s amazing career from diaries, correspondence, and public records. She most eloquently demonstrates that he and Wren should be jointly credited for the rebuilding of London after the Great Fire and convinces as well that Hooke’s irascible temperament, his tendency to take on more work than he could possibly finish, and his unprepossessing looks have consigned him to his current position as the forgotten runner-up to his more celebrated coevals.
A terrific work, notable for its gravity and humor, scholarship and popular appeal. (Illustrations throughout)Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2004
ISBN: 0-06-053897-X
Page Count: 432
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2003
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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