The author’s approach allows him to tell more of the story, and even without presenting Marley’s voice directly, this is an...
An oral history that presents a well-rounded portrait of the music legend, allowing for multiple, sometimes-conflicting, points of view.
Robert Nesta Marley (1945-1981) left a legacy of beautiful music, helping to push reggae from its Jamaican roots out into the world at large. Mindful of the many books about Marley already available, reggae historian Steffens (The Family Acid, 2015, etc.) worked to make a complete narrative covering the musician’s entire life and filling in the cracks left by previous books. The author goes into great detail about Marley’s early recordings, the inner workings of the Wailers, and the cancer that eventually took Marley’s life. Steffens has interviewed dozens of major and minor players in Marley’s life, including Wailers Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer, Island Records’ Chris Blackwell, Marley’s mother, Cedella Booker, and various friends, musicians, and associates. There is a fullness to the collective weight of all these observations that is well-suited to the oral history format. What emerges is a not a clear picture of Marley the man but rather a true sense of how complicated his life was. His legend and impact, his work ethic, his abilities as a musician and leader—these are beyond question—but there are a lot of contrasting voices. On the question of who wrote “I Shot the Sheriff,” for example, Marley’s then-girlfriend Esther Anderson and his friend Lee Jaffe both think the story starts with them. There are disagreements over how people met, who paid royalty payments, who deserves credit for music and lyrics, etc. Steffens inserts himself as a voice like any of the others, offering structure and sometimes serving as a referee. If someone has told what has proven to be a lie, the author steps in and clarifies. But mostly, he lets his subjects speak for themselves.
The author’s approach allows him to tell more of the story, and even without presenting Marley’s voice directly, this is an illuminating portrait of an extraordinary life.Pub Date: July 11, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-393-05845-1
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 7, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2017
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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