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GOATMAN

HOW I TOOK A HOLIDAY FROM BEING HUMAN

A quirkily entertaining exploration of what it means to be human and what it might be like to be a goat.

What would it be like to be a goat?

Thwaites (The Toaster Project, 2011) explains that his goal was to achieve a “profound shift in perspective” so that he might “look at a chair and [not] automatically associate it with sitting…[and ultimately be able to] look at a(nother) goat and think of it as another person like me.” A 30-something freelance designer still living with his father, the author was at loose ends, still basking in the success of his earlier project building a toaster from scratch. Rather than worrying about his future, he tells us, he decided to explore taking “a holiday from being human” by seeing if he could be accepted by a herd of goats. To achieve this, he designed a goatlike exoskeleton that included prosthetic limbs that prevented him from using his hands. The necessity of checking out his environment without using his hands was one of the more interesting aspects of his major change of perspective. He also committed himself to eating grass, albeit cooked in a pressure cooker over a campfire. Thwaites visited a goat sanctuary in the U.K., where he was able to closely observe their behavior. After practicing on his prosthetic limbs, he felt ready for the last leg of his journey. Walking with his prosthetic limbs was, of course, difficult, but the author notes that adopting a four-legged gait was not an insurmountable challenge. At last, he took the final step; hosted by a Swiss farmer, he joined his herd of goats. They seemed to accept his presence as they grazed on a steep alpine trail, although at one point, they became agitated when he inadvertently challenged their hierarchy. Dozens of photos document his journey from man to goat.

A quirkily entertaining exploration of what it means to be human and what it might be like to be a goat.

Pub Date: May 17, 2016

ISBN: 978-1-61689-405-4

Page Count: 208

Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press

Review Posted Online: March 26, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2016

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

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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NIGHT

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. 

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.

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

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