Takes the measure of Wilson’s achievement, but not his mesmeric personality. (b&w illustrations, not seen)
An earnest but flawed biography of the man Aldous Huxley described as “the greatest social architect of the twentieth century.”
A vast Alcoholics Anonymous archive, including hundreds of letters, helps novelist and memoirist Cheever (As Good As I Could Be, 2001, etc.) plumb the lifelong drive, intelligence, and self-doubt of AA cofounder Bill Wilson (1895–1971). Growing up in rural Vermont, Wilson witnessed principles of service and egalitarianism in action that he later embodied in AA’s famous “Twelve Traditions.” But he also felt unmoored when his parents divorced and his mother left him in the care of her father as she pursued a medical degree. Marriage to an educated older socialite fed his insecurity, eased only when he took his first drink while serving in WWI. Over the next 18 years, his growing addiction resulted in countless jobs lost or never pursued. Cheever is at her best in detailing the creation of AA, in 1935, by Dr. Bob Smith and Wilson, who recognized that alcoholism was a disease that could only be countered by a “Power greater than ourselves.” The synthesis of ideas drawn from medicine, psychology, and moral reformers such as the Oxford Group and the Washington Temperance Movement provided a flexibility that enabled AA to grow to 30,000 members by 1946. Cheever acknowledges that Wilson was “not the stuff of saints,” particularly after turning over AA to elected representatives in 1956. (He used his newfound freedom to experiment with LSD, Oujia boards, and extramarital relationships.) Her own experiences as a recovering alcoholic (see Note Found in a Bottle, 1999) deepen the author’s insight into AA’s philosophy and Wilson’s struggles, and she writes lyrically about the environments in which her subject sometimes took refuge from his fame. But Cheever settles too often for clichés (“We are the most puritanical country on earth, and the most profligate”), and although she tells readers about Wilson’s charisma, she does not make us feel it.
Takes the measure of Wilson’s achievement, but not his mesmeric personality. (b&w illustrations, not seen)Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-7432-0154-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2003
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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