A worthy addition to the seemingly endless flood of books on Alexander, including, recently, Paul Cartledge’s literate...
Historian Freeman (Classics/Luther Coll.; Julius Caesar, 2008, etc.) presents an accessible biography of the young Macedonian king.
The author’s love for his subject infuses this footnote-free narrative with an unfussy breeziness, and readers are sure to come away from Alexander’s story with an essential grasp of the details and understanding of his character. Freeman portrays the Macedonian people as having a shared language and culture distinct from Greek—to the Greeks’ scorn but Macedonians’ pride. Alexander’s father was the “genius” on whom his son was able to establish his later empire, and the author wisely devotes some initial pages to Philips’s masterly diplomacy, radical restructuring of his army and training of engineers. From his father, Alexander learned the importance of building alliances in the Greek world by marriage and immersion in the local religions. Conceived from his union with the strange, snake-loving daughter of the kingdom of Epirus, Olympias, Alexander was his father’s pride—winning the magnificent but unmanageable horse Bucephalus out of cunning and bravery—as well as his scourge, demonstrating a troubling hubris. However, “the bull [was] ready for slaughter,” as the oracle at Delphi proclaimed to the unknowing Philip, and when he was felled by a dagger, Alexander, at age 20, was swift to consolidate his own power. He won the loyalty of his troops, thanks to his moving rhetoric gained under his Greek tutors, and embarked on quelling rebellion among the Greek cities. His crossing of the Danube, a feat accomplished only Darius of Persia, amazed and inspired his men. From the destruction of Thebes through campaigns into Mesopotamia, Egypt and even India, Alexander was propelled over the next decade, driven by oracles, omens and what Freeman calls pothos, or longing, before he died, possibly by poisoning, still dreaming of his expedition into Arabia. In a readable, nonacademic narrative, the author capably sketches the powerful legacy of Alexander in spreading the culture of Greece that has proved the foundation for Western civilization.
A worthy addition to the seemingly endless flood of books on Alexander, including, recently, Paul Cartledge’s literate Alexander the Great (2004) and Norman F. Cantor’s opinionated Alexander the Great (2005).Pub Date: Jan. 4, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4165-9280-8
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 14, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2010
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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