A repellent text, as deranged as its subject.
In the guise of a scholarly screed, former Marine Corps Reserve Stolfi (German Panzers on the Offensive Russian Front, 2003, etc.) makes an incredible—and entirely failed—attempt to rehabilitate the most reviled figure of modern history.
The author strongly objects to the universal “denigration” of Adolf Hitler. Across nearly 500 pages, he decries the “antipathy” against his hero, mistaking amoral charisma for integrity. Hitler, writes the author, was a man of towering achievement, a messiah for the German people, an intense, idealistic mastermind. To Stolfi, the young Wagnerian hero of World War I who boasted a firm handshake and direct eye contact was a sensitive Bohemian artist and opera lover. Against all evidence, the author also proclaims him a wonderful painter and superb architect. Hitler pronounced himself the savior of Europe from the threat of Marxism, and the murder of millions of Jews was simply political necessity. Readers should understand that Stolfi’s book is not a biography but a preposterous hagiography employing selective fact supported by quotes from a few Nazis and a lot from the Führer’s own Mein Kampf. It is also a jealous, sarcastic discourse against the “conventional wisdom” of the “great-biographers” (unlike Stolfi, these include reliable authors such as Toland, Fest, Kershaw, etc.). The book ends before the end of the Third Reich. Ultimately, despite the author’s effort to spin the malign corruption—especially offensive while it is still in living memory—there remains nothing beyond the evil and tyranny that his subtitle promises.
A repellent text, as deranged as its subject.Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-61614-474-6
Page Count: 476
Publisher: Prometheus Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2011
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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