The record of a flight, in the summer of 1991, to each of the contiguous 48 states in a WW II-vintage biplane trainer, by bestselling novelist Coonts (Flight of the Intruder, etc.). Though the subtitle seems to beg the book's comparison with John Steinbeck's Travels with Charley or William Least Heat-Moon's Blue Highways, Coonts's gee-whiz tone soon places his book into a kind of upbeat appreciation of America rather than into a dour, midlife odyssey. You'll recall that Steinbeck was at the end of a long, somewhat soured career, while Heat-Moon had lost in love and seemed to be at the end of his career. Coonts, however, is divorced but riding a crest of popularity, and to pursue his chief passion, old airplanes, with the book already bankrolled is a wonderful lark. Even to include his 14-year-old son, David, on part of the journey seems calculated, although the father-son takes are appealing, particularly when David, high above the earth, folds his arms and announces, ``I'm bored.'' Coonts makes pilgrimages to such shopworn shrines as Disneyland, Hannibal, and even Mt. Rushmore, but he hasn't here much fresh to say about them; he's just a tourist. On the other hand, the culture of the private plane comes delightfully to life as Coonts marvels at a country where every little town has its strip, its laconic air controller, its cheap, clean motel just down the road. His observations on world politics seem pedestrian, but his insight into general aviation is clear and noteworthy: ``The general aviation industry is dying. Federal regulation and the legal system have driven it to the lip of the grave where it is waiting to expire and fall in.'' Middle-class, upbeat to a fault, and unmeditative. Yet the descriptions of flight and the portrait of an America seemingly trapped in a time-warp are arresting. (Eight page photo-insert—not seen.)
Pub Date: June 8, 1992
ISBN: 0-671-74884-X
Page Count: 360
Publisher: Pocket
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1992
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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