A richly detailed look at Churchill’s early ambitions and triumphs.
Before he was a statesman, Winston Churchill (1874-1965) sought adventure and fame.
As a young man, Churchill spent five years as a soldier and war correspondent, hoping to win at least one medal for valor and intent on gaining public recognition for his writing. His well-connected and indulgent mother served as literary agent and publicist. Journalist Read (Human Game: The True Story of the ‘Great Escape’ Murders and the Hunt for the Gestapo Gunmen, 2012, etc.) draws on Churchill’s newspaper pieces, books, and letters for this fast-paced biographical and historical narrative. In 1895, Churchill participated in the Cuban War of Independence; the following year, based in India, he fought in the Anglo-Afghan War. Disappointingly for him, his dispatches from Malakand, where British troops fought against the Pashtun, were published in the Daily Telegraph without his byline. Determined to make his name, he plunged into writing a book, The Story of the Malakand Field Force (1898), which earned respectful reviews. Based in Egypt in 1898, he joined the Anglo-Egyptian army, waging battle for the reconquest of Sudan, reluctantly taken on by Gen. Horatio Herbert Kitchener, who was deeply suspicious of war correspondents and disdainful of his lieutenant’s obvious lust for glory. Nevertheless, Churchill prevailed, reporting for the Morning Post and publishing his account as The River War (1899). According to Read, the horror and slaughter that he witnessed darkened his formerly jingoist, romantic view of conflict. Nevertheless, he was drawn to a stint in the Second Boer War, arming himself with six bottles of champagne and 48 bottles of assorted other liquor. He had learned, Read writes, to look after his own comfort. Reports from South Africa to the Morning Post became his next book, London to Ladysmith Via Pretoria (1900). In 1900, the well-known journalist and veteran gained a seat in Parliament.
A richly detailed look at Churchill’s early ambitions and triumphs.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-306-82381-7
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Da Capo
Review Posted Online: June 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2015
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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