An intelligent, understanding, critical, if ultimately admiring study of Elizabeth II and her age, by a Whitbread Prizewinning British historian (Hugh Dalton, not reviewed). When Elizabeth was born, in 1926, there was little expectation that she would be monarch. She was the daughter of the duke of York, George V's second son. The prince of Wales (later Edward VIII) was the clear successor. The turbulent, unsettling sequence of events that led to her accession—the abdication of Edward, the heroic role played by her father (then George VI) in WW II, the storybook quality of her romance with Philip, and her coronation- -contributed to her being subject to ``adulation unparalleled since the days of Louis XIV.'' The underlying theme of this book is how this all changed, despite the remarkable job she herself has done. Pimlott carefully argues that Elizabth, who at first relied heavily on her courtiers, gradually assumed more and more control of the monarchy, becoming at last a cool, confident professional, deeply interested in politics and in her people, legendary for her energy and patience. As to the decline of interest in royalty, Pimlott suggests a number of factors having relatively little to do with the queen herself, including the antics of the younger generation of royals, the intrusiveness of the press, the decline in respect for institutions, the transfer of British interests to Europe rather than the Commonwealth. Reflecting the greater openness that now characterizes discussion of the royals, Pimlott tartly notes, for instance, that the union of Charles and Diana was ``a marriage of convenience that was disguised to everybody, including themselves, as a lovematch.'' He concludes with a paradox: ``a pilloried family, a much criticized institution, even a widely questioned role—and yet, a valued incumbent.'' He is, perhaps, exaggerating the institution's difficulties. But no one has analyzed these problems with greater acuteness or more sense. (69 b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Sept. 19, 1997
ISBN: 0-471-19431-X
Page Count: 668
Publisher: Wiley
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1997
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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