A page-turning, eye-opening biography that shatters our impressions of India as established by the British Raj.
Lal (South Asian History/Emory Univ.; Coming of Age in Nineteenth-Century India: The Girl-Child and the Art of Playfulness, 2013, etc.) shines a light on Nur Jahan (1577-1645), who ruled as co-sovereign in the Mughal court, taking her husband’s place without actually usurping him.
Before she ascended, her husband, Jahangir, had fallen victim to overindulgence in drink and opium, and she slowly assumed duties with his full support. Jahangir was mercurial, ill-tempered, but he loved the signs of royal power. His traveling procession consisted of hundreds of tents draped in velvet and brocade, an audience hall of more than 70 rooms with 1,000 carpets, a harem, and stables. He inherited none of his father’s empire-building drive, but he was a patron of the arts, hunter, naturalist, mystic, and book lover. He loved statistics and traveled mainly to make measurements of flora and fauna and catalog the characteristics of his country. He saw his wife as highly intelligent, talented, and politically savvy, which was due in large part to an aristocratic upbringing in her Persian parents’ household. Rather than serving as a quiet counselor and smoothing relations between the emperor and his sons, Nur took direct action. She was an accomplished adviser, hunter, diplomat, and aesthete. She designed her parents’ tomb in Agra, anticipating the Taj Mahal, which was built by her stepson, Shah Jahan. Agra was also home to her designs for her and Jahangir’s tombs and her famous Light Scattering Garden. The author’s descriptions of Agra are superb, and her detailed explanations of Nur’s upbringing reflect her long study, deep understanding, and modern take on a little-explored subject. When the emperor was kidnapped by his son’s ally, it was Nur who led an army to attempt his rescue. She must be held as one of history’s great independent, powerful women.
A page-turning, eye-opening biography that shatters our impressions of India as established by the British Raj.Pub Date: July 3, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-393-23934-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2018
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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