The authors succeed brilliantly in bringing this fascinating statesman to life.
Insightful biography of Cato (95 B.C.–46 B.C.), enemy of Julius Caesar.
Goodman and Huffington Post managing editor Soni write not from the viewpoint of academic historians, but rather as students of the classics who want to pass on the rich history of Rome from the time of Sulla to the death of Caesar. They carefully cite all the classic works that the non-Latin reading public may have missed. Plutarch’s biography of Cato is the most detailed, but the authors diligently temper his didactic history with facts gleaned from a wealth of sources. Cato devoted his life to stoicism even though his grandfather fought to ban the rigid Hellenic philosophy. During Cato’s time, Rome suffered from homegrown terrorism, a debt crisis, multiple foreign wars and a widening economic gap. He raged against corruption brought on by wealth and empire and desperately fought for limited government. Most particularly, he fought against both Pompey and Caesar in their struggles to control Rome. He disliked Pompey, but his greatest fear, soon to be realized, was the reign of Caesar. Few of Cato’s writings survive, so his legend comes largely from the near-deification by those who began to write about him after his disturbing suicide. Cicero, who both knew and fought with Cato, was the first to laud his political legacy; from there it never stopped. Virgil, Caesar, Seneca and Augustine wrote about Cato. Dante paid him the ultimate compliment in making Cato one of only four pagans who escaped hell in the Divine Comedy. Joseph Addison’s Cato, A Tragedy was required reading throughout the 18th century, and George Washington carried it with him and had it staged at Valley Forge.
The authors succeed brilliantly in bringing this fascinating statesman to life.Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-68123-4
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2012
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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