TV talk-show legend Philbin reminisces about some of the important people who have impacted his impressive 50-year run.
“Rege” is not the most insightful author. Palling around with Jack Nicholson was a hoot; meeting Joe DiMaggio was a thrill; dining at home with George Clooney was a delight; etc. A few dozen strong personalities comprise the author’s pantheon of friends and heroes, but none of them, including wife and frequent TV co-host Joy, receive anything other than superficial attention. For example, Philbin’s description of his life partner: “Great face. Great figure. Wonderful personality. Charming conversationalist. All the things you want in a woman.” Chapters devoted to other potentially fascinating personalities—e.g., George Steinbrenner, Jerry Seinfeld, Steven Spielberg—run just a scant few pages, and each chapter ends with a few painfully obvious observations about “What I Took Away From It All.” Philbin, whose broadcasting career started in the late ’50s and continues today despite his recent departure from his daily morning show with Kelly Ripa, got to know hundreds of interesting people during his unparalleled tenure in TV. He apparently just didn’t know any of them that well. And perhaps that has been the secret to his enduring success. He doesn’t probe. He doesn’t pry. He’s the guy you can continually goof on and still get away with it. Others have come and gone, but the breezy Philbin is still here. What you see on TV is what you get in this book. Fans will love it; others won’t have much to contemplate.
Pub Date: Nov. 15, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-06-210975-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: It Books/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 4, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
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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