In the past decade, Bennett has been experiencing a renaissance among listeners. Many of them should be happy to hear how he...
The nonagenarian singer expresses his gratitude to many of the people who have helped him along the way.
With the help of NPR host Simon, Bennett presents not so much a memoir as a collection of sweet, uplifting tributes to people ranging from Abraham Lincoln to Lady Gaga as well as places, including Astoria in Queens, New York; the small town of Pyrites in upstate New York; and, of course, San Francisco, where Bennett famously left his heart. Each chapter concludes with a lesson the author has learned or a bit of wisdom gained from the subject of the chapter. Duke Ellington taught him never to worry “about going into or out of style,” and Lena Horne’s resilience made him think, “when life sends you difficulties or misfortunes, don’t get mad or sad—get busy.” From both Fred Astaire, who “used to float past” Bennett’s house on his regular morning walk, and Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, the singer learned the same lesson: trim your work down to its essence. His own chapters are neat and modest. If they don’t tell readers much about Bennett’s inner life, home life, or any turmoil he might have experienced over the decades, they do paint miniportraits of many of the people who helped him on his path. Many of them, as might be expected, are musicians or songwriters, like Amy Winehouse, whose death he laments, and Ella Fitzgerald, whose albums provide a “purely joyful experience.” The author also salutes family members, like his father, who died when Bennett was 10, and painters such as Picasso and John Singer Sargent. The volume is illustrated with small reproductions of many of Bennett’s paintings, which he signs with his birth name, Anthony Benedetto.
In the past decade, Bennett has been experiencing a renaissance among listeners. Many of them should be happy to hear how he got to this point.Pub Date: Nov. 15, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-247677-7
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Oct. 4, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2016
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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