The 18-year-old fraternity pledge’s guide to life.
Expensively educated child-of-privilege-turned-professional-asshole Max (Assholes Finish First, 2011, etc.) ends his “fratire” series with another memoir full of binge drinking, upchucking and general unhinged misanthropy.
Here the author cuddles up next to blowhard Bill O’Reilly, crackpot psychologists, Hollywood gossips and psychotic Army snipers. There are also plenty of repetitious barhopping stories involving Max and the angry gynophobes he hangs with, all out for some good old-fashioned recreational hate sex (or often just hate, period) with clueless sorority-type chicks. The Tucker Max formula for success? He interacts with people who have the rare disability of being even more moronic than he is—and so-called hilarity ensues. Beyond the predictable mouthing off about his “awesome” life, in this latest book we also get sections featuring Max’s boring “sexting” transcripts, a self-righteous diatribe against the mother of Miss Vermont (who sued him for libel), some routine white-trash strip-club experiences and a proud recollection of the time he beat up a frail European guy. There’s also a fond remembrance of his homosocial maritime bromance with one of the macho crab fisherman of Deadliest Catch fame: Although he vomited from seasickness during much of his Alaskan fishing expedition, he seemed to be much more at ease with the rough boys on the Time Bandit than with the unfortunate females he hits on in yuppie bars. We also learn some further startling new information about the author—he likes Southern rap and hates the French! Although there’s no telling how much honesty there is behind any of Max’s chauvinist bluster, undoubtedly the most believable statement in the book comes in the penultimate chapter, where he reveals the fact that he has no girlfriend or wife. Shocking.
The 18-year-old fraternity pledge’s guide to life.Pub Date: Feb. 7, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4516-6903-9
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Blue Heeler Books
Review Posted Online: April 3, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2012
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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