An inspired story of a passionate American who has delved into a variety of livelihoods and made a distinctive mark on each.
Moore further explores his life’s accomplishments and struggles and the everyday significance of “fate and meaning.”
Following a best-selling debut juxtaposing his mentored childhood against that of a ne’er-do-well namesake in Baltimore (The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates, 2010), the author’s second book charts his personal history through active military duty and time on Wall Street. Though a less-charismatic offshoot of that former effort, Moore’s writing remains consistently articulate and escorts readers through a decade of pivotal years when he left his childhood home for academic study at Oxford University in England in 2001, through a data-analysis internship with the Department of Homeland Security and a promising career in investment banking, which he sacrificed for deployment as a soldier in the war in Afghanistan. Moore’s wartime experiences provide a compelling narrative of personal determination and dedication to lead others with strength, yet he also deftly examines his comprehension of the larger impact and ironies of global conflict and American foreign policy. The author continues to chronicle his personal history with an often frustrating stint as a White House Fellow (“[m]oving the deep bureaucracy of lifelong civil servants was more like steering a tanker than a speedboat”), work in finance, and finally as a husband, father, public speaker, entrepreneur and youth advocate. Though the memoir’s timeline meanders and Moore’s sense of focus occasionally drifts, the book is ultimately unified by generous profiles of upstanding “workers” whose consistent acts of youth mentorship, veteran rehabilitation, product development and selfless humanitarianism are remarkable yet often overlooked or underappreciated in contemporary society. The takeaway is crystal clear: Take pride in your endeavors, and make every attempt to discover the “meaning of success in a volatile, difficult, and seemingly anchorless world.”
An inspired story of a passionate American who has delved into a variety of livelihoods and made a distinctive mark on each.Pub Date: Jan. 13, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9357-8
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
IN THE NEWS
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
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
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