In this bicentennial of the failed United Irishmen rising against Britain, a charismatic Protestant aristocrat, soldier, and radical politician receives the extended treatment usually given to the rebellion’s legendary Wolfe Tone. Lord Edward Fitzgerald (1763—98) was the son of the senior peer of Ireland; his mother, Emily, was a member of the Lennox family that Tillyard chronicled in Aristocrats (1994). After serving with the British army in the American Revolution, Lord Edward grew increasingly alienated from his ruling-class milieu and committed to Enlightenment ideals of liberty and equality (he was a friend of the radicals Charles James Fox and Tom Paine). As a member of the Irish Parliament, he came to believe that incremental freedom would never rescue Ireland from the injustice, poverty, and sectarianism that had become rife under British rule. Despite his wish to concede leadership to others in the secret revolutionary group the United Irishmen, he became a leading figure in the gathering anti-English agitation because of his military background, conspicuous bravery, wealth, ties to revolutionary France, and easy familiarity with Irish peasants. In May 1798, however, having become the most hunted man in Dublin, Lord Edward was betrayed and mortally wounded while being captured. His death turned the rebellion into a doomed series of uncoordinated uprisings. Tillyard quotes copiously from letters to and from her hero, vividly bringing to life the privileged background he rejected. However, she is less successful in depicting the course of his life as —logical, consistent, and tragically inexorable.— This failure results partly from his passionate nature, partly from Tillyard’s inability to penetrate deeply into Lord Edward’s Enlightenment ideals. Nevertheless, with a near-novelistic depiction of scene, Tillyard recreates the physical and emotional world of this reckless, almost Byronic aristocrat with great flair. Lord Edward materializes here as not just an Irish martyr, but as a remarkable figure far in advance of his turbulent times. (8 pages b&w photos, 4 pages color photos, not seen)
Pub Date: June 15, 1998
ISBN: 0-374-12383-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1998
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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