bookshelf

A GOLDEN VOICE

Name: A GOLDEN VOICE
Author: Ted Williams
ISBN: 978-1-592-40714-9

HOW FAITH, HARD WORK, AND HUMILITY BROUGHT ME FROM THE STREETS TO SALVATION

by Ted Williams with Bret Witter ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 10, 2012

Disturbing and hard to put down.

bookshelf

A captivating memoir about a man’s life of drug addiction and homelessness.

With the assistance of veteran co-author Witter (co-author: Until Tuesday: A Wounded Warrior and the Golden Retriever Who Saved Him, 2011, etc.), Williams tells the story of how he reached his childhood dream of becoming a radio voice and subsequently lost it through his addiction to crack. The author’s obsession with becoming a radio voice started at age 10 when his mother bought him a radio. He idolized Hank Spann and learned the voice-inflection techniques from the on-air personalities of the time. Williams knew he had the gift of a “golden voice” from childhood, but he enlisted in the Army after graduation. When he was dishonorably discharged for black-marketing electronic equipment, he found a job as a DJ at a radio station in Chadbourn, N.C. He later became a radio personality and town celebrity in Columbus, Ohio, until he became addicted to crack and quit his job to spend all day smoking. The rest of the memoir follows his life as an addict, homeless person and absentee father. The grimy details of crack houses and harsh aspects of homeless life add color to the story, as do the pages written in the voice of his girlfriend Kathy. The writing style is fast-paced and easy to follow despite the whirlwind of events, and Williams does not shy away from self-criticism. Religion becomes a main theme toward the end of the book, as the author claims it was God who ultimately led to his freedom and sobriety. The story ends just before his rise to fame and does not explore his life after he became a national sensation.

Disturbing and hard to put down.

Pub Date: May 10, 2012

ISBN: 978-1-592-40714-9

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Gotham Books

Review Posted Online: March 25, 2012

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2012

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

bookshelf

THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

bookshelf

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

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

bookshelf

NIGHT

by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...

bookshelf

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.

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.