A unique life related with animation, admiration, and affection, but also faithfully and unfancifully. (16-page b&w...
Perceptive biography of an aristocrat Scottish lady who broke social, political, and diplomatic ground.
With a clarity graced by a trove of surviving letters, ably selected and deciphered, Nagel (Humanities/Marymount Manhattan College) follows her subject’s rise and fall. Born late in the 18th century into the wealthiest family in Scotland, Mary Nisbet did not have unlimited access to her monies. So she married Thomas Bruce, Earl of Elgin, a dashing, intelligent striver perennially short of funds. Though her husband is now better known than she, thanks to the marbles he famously (or infamously, depending on your point of view) removed from the Parthenon and transported to Britain, Mary actually had an equally strong—and more positive—impact than Thomas during their lifetimes. In Constantinople, where he was first posted as ambassador, Mary won the hearts of the sultan, Captain Pasha, and the Grand Vizier with her ample supply of brio and dash. In Athens, shocked to see how greatly the Parthenon had suffered from Alaric the Visigoth to the Venetians—it had been used for target practice and as a public toilet; vandalized hunks of the temple had been carted off to every corner of Europe—Ambassador Elgin used the British passion for Hellenistic antiquities to open purse strings back in England and finance the marbles’ relocation. Nagel suggests that Elgin believed “he was rescuing history . . . instead of leaving them to wither and disintegrate,” but his act was not roundly applauded; not only the Greeks but Lord Byron himself thought it scandalous. While her husband was increasingly away from home, involved in one diplomatic imbroglio after another, Mary found herself caught in the affections of Robert Ferguson, a close family friend. When uncovered by Elgin, the affair resulted in Mary losing custody of her children and Elgin losing his bankroll, devastating blows for each.
A unique life related with animation, admiration, and affection, but also faithfully and unfancifully. (16-page b&w photo insert, not seen)Pub Date: Aug. 10, 2004
ISBN: 0-06-054554-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2004
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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