A plethora of detail threatens to overpower this nonetheless fascinating and intimate view of a powerful, appealing man. (4...
Ippolito D’Este (1509–72), the second son of Lucretia Borgia, Duchess of Ferrara, learns how to succeed in the business of ecclesiastical advancement by really trying.
In 1999, the author, an authority on Renaissance architecture (Patronage in Renaissance Italy: From 1400 to the Early Sixteenth Century, 1994, etc.), discovered in Modena a rich archive comprising more than 2,000 letters and 200 account books relating to the career of Ippolito, who lived a lavish life as a prince while he and his family negotiated with a reluctant, simoniacal Pope Paul III for Ippolito’s appointment as a cardinal. With these documents, Hollingsworth reconstructs in minute detail the comings and goings of Ippolito: what he ate, what he wore, how he succeeded (or failed) at cards and tennis, how he tipped, whom he bribed, how he decorated his residences and on and on. Hollingsworth organizes this impressively illustrated volume in traditional chronological fashion (our hero is born on page 15), pausing occasionally to describe such things as Renaissance banquets, the massive renovations at Ippolito’s Palazzo San Francesco (his only extant residence), the wardrobe of the prince (including 468 shoe laces!). Of greater interest are the political maneuverings. Charles V (Holy Roman Emperor) and Francis I of France were competing for European dominance—along with the pope—and Ercole II (the Duke of Ferrara, Ippolito’s older brother) sided with the French. Ippolito became a favorite of Francis and lived in his court for some years, but when it looked as if Francis couldn’t assure Ippolito of his cardinal’s hat, Charles V offered his patronage, an offer Ippolito declined to take. It wasn’t until 1539 that the pope was sufficiently persuaded to appoint Ippolito (power, patronage and money were the sticking points). Hollingsworth ends her account as Ippolito consolidates his authority—and begins to count his cash.
A plethora of detail threatens to overpower this nonetheless fascinating and intimate view of a powerful, appealing man. (4 maps; 35 b&w illustrations)Pub Date: June 16, 2005
ISBN: 1-58567-680-2
Page Count: 308
Publisher: Overlook
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2005
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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