A finely wrought and fascinating biography from O'Brian, acclaimed author of historical naval adventures (The Truelove, 1992, etc.), who now turns his considerable storytelling talents to the life of Joseph Banks (1743-1820)—explorer, botanist, natural philosopher. Banks is a biographer's dream subject: He wrote letters by the peck and drove, left thousands of journal pages, and led an eventful, public life. As a young man, he served as expedition botanist on Captain James Cook's first circumnavigation of the globe (thus claiming his fame), then went on to develop the royal gardens at Kew into a world-class botanical collection; to produce the colossal collection of botanical treasures from the Cook's Endeavour voyage; to make vibrant the moribund Royal Society during his long presidency; to spur the colonization of Australia; and to spend years as privy councillor and close friend to George III. Banks even concocted the breadfruit transplant scheme that brought mutiny to the Bounty and Captain Bligh to the silver screen. O'Brian has a gift for taking a swarm of potentially suffocating details and spinning a compelling story, full of marvelous understatements ("He showed remarkable courage when faced with angry cannibals"; "The inhabitants behaved in a somewhat murderous fashion"), complete with delightful minutiae from the byways and backwaters of Banks's life. Here, O'Brian really shines as a writer, pure and simple, wielding his graceful and stylish prose with great dexterity. Fortunately, he is not so in love with his own voice that he doesn't let Banks speak for himself. Long passages directly from the naturalist's journals are wisely included; their raw, abbreviated quality lends a keen immediacy to the narrative. An impressive achievement, destined to swell the ranks of O'Brian's already sizable readership.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0226616282
Page Count: 328
Publisher: Godine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1992
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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