An evenhanded assessment of “a likable narcissist” who, the author maintains, changed Americans’ perceptions of racial...
The making of the author of “the two most important works in black culture in the twentieth century.”
Alex Haley (1921-1992) rose to fame with two books, The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965) and Roots (1976), the basis of a miniseries viewed by as many as 130 million. Norrell (History/Univ. of Tennessee; Up From History: The Life of Booker T. Washington, 2009, etc.) brings a broad background in African-American history to this well-researched portrait of a controversial writer. Haley’s early publications appeared in Reader’s Digest, for which he wrote profiles of “talented African Americans who had overcome great obstacles and remained humble, unchanged by great success.” His breakthrough project, however, focused on a far different man: Malcolm X, the incendiary spokesman of the Black Muslims. Malcolm allowed Haley to write his autobiography, subject to his approval. “A writer is what I want, not an interpreter,” Malcolm declared. Malcolm’s biographer, Manning Marable, described Haley as “opportunistic, bourgeois, and politically conservative” compared to his subject, and Norrell agrees that Haley aimed “to maximize both its sensational value and its commercial success.” Praised by most reviewers, the book sold 2 million copies in its first years. Still, Haley was always in debt, eager for publishing contracts and speaking gigs “to address his financial woes.” He once proposed a self-help book aimed at white readers called “How to Co-Exist with Negroes.” A more salable project was his own family’s history, beginning with their roots in Africa. Haley’s editors at Doubleday questioned whether the book was fact or fiction since some passages “were based on Haley’s guessing about facts and eliding evidence.” The decision to call it nonfiction, Norrell asserts, was a mistake and opened Haley up to charges of misrepresentation. The scandal that ensued dogged him for the rest of his career.
An evenhanded assessment of “a likable narcissist” who, the author maintains, changed Americans’ perceptions of racial history.Pub Date: Nov. 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-137-27960-6
Page Count: 272
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2015
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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