Bigger is not necessarily better, but there’s much to be enjoyed, and much to be learned, should readers take the long road...
Hetherington presents sweeping accounts of Polish history and Joseph Pilsudski, a major figure in the struggle for Polish independence.
Hetherington warrants praise for the thoroughness of his research and the consistently engaging quality of his prose. His ability to sift through the lion’s share of Polish history (from the country’s founding until the rise of its neighbor, Nazi Germany, in the 1930s), and interweave that history with the singular life of freedom fighter, and eventual dictator, Joseph Pilsudski, is a remarkable feat. The first and last sentences of the opening chapter, for example, form perfect bookends to a brief sketch of the Polish political scene of 1900 as well as the astonishing tale of Pilsudski’s escape from a Russian prison—“The Warsaw Citadel had the ominous reputation as the most escape proof of czarist prisons,” begins the story, while “The man who would liberate Poland was free,” brings that chapter to a satisfying end and sets the stage for the saga of Polish history that’s to come. That Hetherington should maintain control over his material and tell this grand tale with obvious narrative flair renders his book a doubly significant achievement. But the sheer scope of this ambitious work may prove an obstacle for readers. Weighing in at over 700 pages, Hetherington’s tome will test readers’ enthusiasm for Polish history. Reasonable minds may question the author’s assertion that it’s impossible to understand Pilsudski’s place in Polish history, and Poland’s place in the European landscape, without reaching as far back as the legendary beginning of a Polish kingdom and picking up the story in the 800s. Hetherington’s ability to entertain is considerable, and Pilsudski, who escaped from prisons, robbed Russian treasury trains and created his own Polish army, gives Hetherington a lot to work with. But it’s a long way from the time of the Goths to the height of Pilsudski’s influence in the early 20th century, and it’s hard to shake the suspicion that Hetherington has needlessly combined two books into one.
Bigger is not necessarily better, but there’s much to be enjoyed, and much to be learned, should readers take the long road to Pilsudski.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0983656302
Page Count: 724
Publisher: Pingora
Review Posted Online: Aug. 22, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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