A well-argued case that gives feminist substance to Amelia Earhart's firm place in the national pantheon. Ware (Modern American Women, 1989, etc.—not reviewed) contends that, in her roles as aviator, teacher, author, wife, and media personality, Earhart personified the ill-defined feminism of the 1920's and 30's. As she sketches the familiar Earhart saga- -illuminated by the two transatlantic flights that made her a national heroine—Ware places it firmly in the context of the era, when the organized struggle for women's equality had given way to what she calls ``liberal feminism,'' the celebration of individual achievement. In the nine years between Earhart's first transatlantic flight, in 1928 (on which she was a passenger, not the pilot), and her disappearance nine years later somewhere in the Pacific, Earhart often made the annual lists of the ten or fifty or one hundred most-achieving women, along with her friend Eleanor Roosevelt. What gave Earhart credibility wasn't only her courage and daring but her campaign to encourage women to step away from traditional pursuits and spread their wings. They could do what she'd done, literally or figuratively—so ran her message in speeches, newsreels, magazines, books, and a column for Cosmopolitan. Ware suggests that, as credible as Earhart's achievements were, she was also—thanks in great part to the marketing efforts of her husband—a forerunner of today's media personality; but the author's attempt to equate Earhart's boyish appeal with the mysterious sexuality of Garbo and Dietrich is unconvincing. What happened over the Pacific? No solutions are offered here, only a debunking of the rumor that Earhart's Pacific flight was really a spy mission—a notion, Ware says, that surfaced in the wake of a Rosalind Russell movie loosely inspired by the aviator's career. Strong in discussing Earhart as an advocate for women's equality, weaker in establishing her as an icon of popular culture. (Photographs—not seen)
Pub Date: Nov. 8, 1993
ISBN: 0-393-03551-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1993
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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