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INSISTING ON THE IMPOSSIBLE

Name: INSISTING ON THE IMPOSSIBLE
Author: Victor K. McElheny
ISBN: 0-7382-0009-3

THE LIFE OF EDWIN LAND, INVENTOR OF INSTANT PHOTOGRAPHY

by Victor K. McElheny ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 1998

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The life of Edwin Land could easily spring from one of Horatio Alger’s stories. Son of a scrap-metal dealer, Land dropped out of Harvard to pursue the inventing bug and his dream of creating a cheap plastic sheet polarizer. He wanted to decrease auto accidents caused by headlight glare, but it was with sunglasses and photography that the polarizer and the newly founded Polaroid corporation found success. An inveterate innovator and conceptualizer, Land would eventually receive more patents than any other American, excepting Edison. His genius was both for the sudden inspiration and the organizational ability to get people behind him to fill in the details. For example, the idea for instant photography came to him in the space of an afternoon, but it would take many years and many talented individuals to work out all the details. He also developed a new theory of color vision, worked as a science advisor for President Eisenhower, and helped design NASA. He drove Polaroid relentlessly to create new refinements and inventions such as color film and the SX-70 camera. He was motivated by the belief that “the bottom line’s in heaven. The real business of business is building things.” His magic touch held right until the end when he developed instant color movie film just as video recorders were coming on the market. The costs to Polaroid were enormous and led to a gradual severing of ties between Land and his company. Former New York Times science reporter McElheny has done a formidable research job, but he can—t seem to decide whether this is a popular account or one for specialists. There are long descriptions of technology and processes that are almost unintelligible to the layperson. The organization throughout is also appalling, with frequent, inexplicable shifts back and forth in time. Finally, McElheny’s Land seems like a guest in his own biography, as ghostly and indistinct as the image on a negative. (b&w photos)

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1998

ISBN: 0-7382-0009-3

Page Count: 560

Publisher: Perseus

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1998

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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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.

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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

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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...

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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.