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MOUNTAIN, GET OUT OF MY WAY

LIFE LESSONS AND LEARNED TRUTHS

Straight from the heart and the boob tube, Montel's memoir offers simplistic, ``as seen on TV'' solutions to complex problems. Nationally syndicated talk show personality Williams traces our contemporary social problems to the removal of God from public schools. This, he contends, ``marks the beginning of the deterioration of the American family, and without family this country has just spun out of control.'' When young people no longer attend church or believe in God, then money becomes their god. And in their pursuit of money, insists Williams, morality is cast aside. This domino theory ignores the socioeconomic factors that have led to the dissolution of the family, and the fact that church attendance is actually on the upswing, particularly in the inner city. One can hardly argue, though, with Williams's forthright solutions, despite their simplicity. He proposes that the ills of society be remedied with his three R's: restraint, responsibility and respect. Young people need to think about the consequences of their actions, to assume responsibility for their actions, and to regard one another with respect. The Holy Host, unfortunately, undermines his message with selective true confessions. He was clearly not there for his first wife and his two older daughters. Though he takes responsibility for ``messing up'' (``at home, I certainly wasn't practicing what I was preaching''), the reader becomes disillusioned with the messenger. And now, when he supposedly does have his life together, with a new wife and two more children, one wonders just how much time he can devote to his family (or to God) while ``working twelve to fourteen hours a day, seven days a week.'' Likely to appeal to Montel fans and other ``gawk show'' devotees, Mountain, Get Out of My Way won't make the earth move.*justify no* Straight from the heart and the boob tube, Montel's memoir offers simplistic, ``as seen on TV'' solutions to complex problems. Nationally syndicated talk show personality Williams traces our contemporary social problems to the removal of God from public schools. This, he contends, ``marks the beginning of the deterioration of the American family, and without family this country has just spun out of control.'' When young people no longer attend church or believe in God, then money becomes their god. And in their pursuit of money, insists Williams, morality is cast aside. This domino theory ignores the socioeconomic factors that have led to the dissolution of the family, and the fact that church attendance is actually on the upswing, particularly in the inner city. One can hardly argue, though, with Williams's forthright solutions, despite their simplicity. He proposes that the ills of society be remedied with his three R's: restraint, responsibility and respect. Young people need to think about the consequences of their actions, to assume responsibility for their actions, and to regard one another with respect. The Holy Host, unfortunately, undermines his message with selective true confessions. He was clearly not there for his first wife and his two older daughters. Though he takes responsibility for ``messing up'' (``at home, I certainly wasn't practicing what I was preaching''), the reader becomes disillusioned with the messenger. And now, when he supposedly does have his life together, with a new wife and two more children, one wonders just how much time he can devote to his family (or to God) while ``working twelve to fourteen hours a day, seven days a week.'' Likely to appeal to Montel fans and other ``gawk show'' devotees, Mountain, Get Out of My Way won't make the earth move.*justify no* Straight from the heart and the boob tube, Montel's memoir offers simplistic, ``as seen on TV'' solutions to complex problems. Nationally syndicated talk show personality Williams traces our contemporary social problems to the removal of God from public schools. This, he contends, ``marks the beginning of the deterioration of the American family, and without family this country has just spun out of control.'' When young people no longer attend church or believe in God, then money becomes their god. And in their pursuit of money, insists Williams, morality is cast aside. This domino theory ignores the socioeconomic factors that have led to the dissolution of the family, and the fact that church attendance is actually on the upswing, particularly in the inner city. One can hardly argue, though, with Williams's forthright solutions, despite their simplicity. He proposes that the ills of society be remedied with his three R's: restraint, responsibility and respect. Young people need to think about the consequences of their actions, to assume responsibility for their actions, and to regard one another with respect. The Holy Host, unfortunately, undermines his message with selective true confessions. He was clearly not there for his first wife and his two older daughters. Though he takes responsibility for ``messing up'' (``at home, I certainly wasn't practicing what I was preaching''), the reader becomes disillusioned with the messenger. And now, when he supposedly does have his life together, with a new wife and two more children, one wonders just how much time he can devote to his family (or to God) while ``working twelve to fourteen hours a day, seven days a week.'' Likely to appeal to Montel fans and other ``gawk show'' devotees, Mountain, Get Out of My Way won't make the earth move.*justify no* Straight from the heart and the boob tube, Montel's memoir offers simplistic, ``as seen on TV'' solutions to complex problems. Nationally syndicated talk show personality Williams traces our contemporary social problems to the removal of God from public schools. This, he contends, ``marks the beginning of the deterioration of the American family, and without family this country has just spun out of control.'' When young people no longer attend church or believe in God, then money becomes their god. And in their pursuit of money, insists Williams, morality is cast aside. This domino theory ignores the socioeconomic factors that have led to the dissolution of the family, and the fact that church attendance is actually on the upswing, particularly in the inner city. One can hardly argue, though, with Williams's forthright solutions, despite their simplicity. He proposes that the ills of society be remedied with his three R's: restraint, responsibility and respect. Young people need to think about the consequences of their actions, to assume responsibility for their actions, and to regard one another with respect. The Holy Host, unfortunately, undermines his message with selective true confessions. He was clearly not there for his first wife and his two older daughters. Though he takes responsibility for ``messing up'' (``at home, I certainly wasn't practicing what I was preaching''), the reader becomes disillusioned with the messenger. And now, when he supposedly does have his life together, with a new wife and two more children, one wonders just how much time he can devote to his family (or to God) while ``working twelve to fourteen hours a day, seven days a week.'' Likely to appeal to Montel fans and other ``gawk show'' devotees, Mountain, Get Out

Pub Date: March 13, 1996

ISBN: 0-446-51907-3

Page Count: 224

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1996

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NIGHT

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. 

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.

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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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

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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