A valiant resurrection of an important early American author.
Hyperbolic biography of the Massachusetts patriot and author, told largely through her correspondence with John and Abigail Adams.
Stuart (The Reluctant Spiritualist: The Life of Maggie Fox, 2005, etc.) longs to discover in Mercy Otis Warren (1728–1814) a long-lost feminist heroine, and her overeagerness is palpable in such breathless section titles as “Conscience of the Revolution” and “Penwoman to Posterity.” Yes, Warren was the author of numerous popular satirical plays that criticized the British, as well as a three-volume history of the American Revolution. But she was first and foremost a devoted wife and mother who came to her patriotic ideals largely through her firebrand brother James (“taxation without representation is tyranny”) and their father, a merchant and judge in West Barnstable, Mass., who had long clashed with British authorities. She and husband James Warren, the high sheriff of Plymouth County, were swept up in the events of the early rebellion, clashing in particular with loyalist governor Thomas Hutchinson. They hosted Sons of Liberty gatherings, Mercy composed a mock epic entitled “The Squabble of the Sea Nymphs” on the occasion of the Boston Tea Party, and James became president of the Provisional Congress after Bunker Hill. The revolution won, the Warrens moved aside from the political mainstream, feeling that the old patriotic, Puritan values were giving way to new money, profiteering and materialism. Though John Adams had urged her to write it, History of the Rise, Progress and Termination of the American Revolution (1805) assessed the presidency of her neighbor and literary mentor in moderately unflattering terms, putting an eight-year damper on their friendship. Abigail Adams remained in touch with Mercy, and Stuart emphasizes throughout her account that notable women such as these were relegated to the wings, passing frenzied notes to their men taking action at center stage.
A valiant resurrection of an important early American author.Pub Date: July 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-8070-5516-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Beacon Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2008
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
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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