A fine rags-to-riches-to–executioner’s-block story of a major figure of the English Reformation.
A mildly revisionist biography of Thomas Cromwell (1485-1540).
Long reviled as the evil genius who secured Henry VIII’s divorce from Catharine of Aragon and oversaw the looting of Catholic monasteries, Cromwell received spectacular rehabilitation in Hilary Mantel’s novel Wolf Hall (2009) and its sequel, Bring Up the Bodies (2012). Agreeing that Mantel was onto something, Borman (Queen of the Conqueror: The Life of Matilda, Wife of William I, 2012, etc.), joint chief curator of historic royal palaces and chief executive of Britain’s Heritage Education Trust, writes an engrossing biography of a ruthless man who rose and fell in the service of a ruthless king, a path followed by dozens close to Henry. Son of a blacksmith, Cromwell traveled and worked on the continent as a young man. At age 30, as a successful London merchant and lawyer, he entered the household of Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, Henry VIII’s leading adviser, and prospered. When Henry turned against Wolsey in 1529 (largely due to his reluctance to promote the king’s divorce), Cromwell stepped in. Fiercely dedicated to fulfilling Henry’s desires, Cromwell switched from appeals to the pope to manipulating Parliament and browbeating England’s clerical establishment. After years of political arm-twisting, he succeeded. Henry married Anne Boleyn and, far more significant, replaced the pope as head of the English church. Cromwell presided over the dissolution of church property, a windfall for the king, and successfully distanced himself from Anne as she fell from favor. His luck and life ran out in 1540 when enemies took advantage of Henry’s growing conservatism in matters of religious doctrine (he had less interest than Cromwell in Protestant reforms) and he disastrously supported Henry’s marriage to Anne of Cleves.
A fine rags-to-riches-to–executioner’s-block story of a major figure of the English Reformation.Pub Date: Jan. 6, 2015
ISBN: 978-0802123176
Page Count: 456
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly
Review Posted Online: Oct. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2014
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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