by Michael Broers ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 15, 2015
Among the plethora of Napoleon biographies, this is immensely engaging for lay readers.
This first in a two-part biography does an excellent job of delineating the emotional and intellectual development of the Corsican general–turned–French emperor.
English historian Broers (Western European History/Oxford Univ.; Napoleon's Other War: Bandits, Rebels and Their Pursuers in the Age of Revolutions, 2010, etc.) offers a wonderful sense of the genius—and man—who was so stunningly able to remake European boundaries and mores after the meltdown from the French Revolution. In this first volume, the author moves from Napoleon’s idyllic years growing up in Corsica to his being chased out of the “cradle” with his mother and family for running afoul of the republicans in 1793. He eventually washed up on the shores of the Riviera and was able to make his career mark in the army with the siege of Toulon. The “politics of survival” dictated the years to follow, up to 1765, but Broers astutely points out that Napoleon was the last generation of supremely and classically well-read leaders (a group that includes Thomas Jefferson) and that his advance in the military, as well as within a heavily striated society, was largely the result of his diligent, ongoing efforts at self-improvement. Working from the “still emerging,” unexpurgated correspondence (which reaches the year 1809) being compiled by the Fondation Napoléon in Paris, under the direction of distinguished French historian Thierry Lentz, the author offers some exciting character observations. Napoleon had an eye for catching talent—he adored and elevated his very worthy stepchildren, Hortense and Eugène—while tolerating the outrageous shenanigans of many members of his family. From his previous work, Broers is well-attuned to how Napoleon fashioned his conquest and administration of Italy: “amalgamation” and “rallying to the new regime.” His proto-empire then allowed a swift and efficient system of wider reforms in France after the coup.
Among the plethora of Napoleon biographies, this is immensely engaging for lay readers.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-60598-872-6
Page Count: 608
Publisher: Pegasus
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2015
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by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 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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by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
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
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