An oddly disjointed work of history.
Journalist Martelle (Detroit: The Biography, 2012, etc.) juxtaposes two American lives anchored in two very different centuries and milieus.
The author grapples for cohesion and relevance in telling the stories of two notable American characters, John Paul Jones (1747-1792) and Horace Porter (1837-1921), whose lives only intersected across a huge swath of history—and after Jones’ death in Paris. The rogue seaman of the American Revolution who made a swashbuckling reputation for challenging the supreme British navy on its own turf, Jones died at age 45 of kidney failure and pneumonia. A Scottish-born Protestant, he had to be buried outside of the city’s Catholic perimeters, in the cemetery of Saint Louis, financed by his wealthy American friend Gouverneur Morris and others. However, since the French Revolution was raging, the cemetery became a dumping ground, and the celebrated American’s resting place was quickly forgotten. Gradually, over a tumultuous century of American history, Jones’ fame grew, thanks largely to published letters by the Revolutionary leaders, biographies and other literary efforts, such as James Fenimore Cooper’s novel The Pilot (1823). Unfortunately, Martelle does not extract any material from these sources to provide a more fully fleshed portrait of Jones. Meanwhile, Porter, who was educated at West Point, served as aide to Gen. Grant during the Civil War and was appointed ambassador to France by President William McKinley, was encouraged by fellow patriot President Theodore Roosevelt to pursue the whereabouts of Jones’ body. With his great wealth and connections, Porter could do it: The discovery of the cemetery and the actual digging for the coffin amid all the skeletons make for a fascinating mystery, despite the tertiary slog through assassinations, war with Spain and the Dreyfus Affair.
An oddly disjointed work of history.Pub Date: May 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61374-730-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
Review Posted Online: March 10, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2014
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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