Intimate, spellbinding drama of the affinity between friends, each struggling in his own way to tell the country the truth...
Journalist and historian Perry (Lift Up Thy Voice, 2001, etc.) examines in remarkable detail the 15-month period during which two iconic American figures produced monumental American literature.
Ulysses S. Grant (1822–85) had the greater struggle. Left holding the bag in 1884 after his Wall Street partner absconded, the two-term president and the country’s greatest general was flat broke, with a cancerous growth fatally rooted at the back of his mouth. Mark Twain (1835–1910), younger by a dozen years, had evolved over the previous decade from an unabashed fan into a close friend and confidant of Grant’s. The two initially had little more in common than an upbringing in the West (Twain actually served a few weeks in a Confederate unit before abandoning the Civil War entirely), but both loved to tell stories while smoking cigars. Not privy at first to the seriousness of Grant’s illness, Twain proposed that the general write his memoirs as a favor to the nation and a way to make money for both of them; Perry avers that Twain hoped to secure the publishing rights as a largesse for the company he owned, fronted by his niece’s husband. The proud and modest Grant had no income and dismissed any attempts at financial aid, no matter how well disguised, even from fellow officers who had stayed close. He had resisted writing his memoirs, the author states, for fear that a poor reception would further embarrass his family. After winning him over, Twain took up an unfinished novel he had put down years before without a clue to an ending; now he finally got his scapegrace hero and runaway slave off the river to complete The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
Intimate, spellbinding drama of the affinity between friends, each struggling in his own way to tell the country the truth about itself.Pub Date: May 11, 2004
ISBN: 0-679-64273-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2004
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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