Exhaustive biography of Hugh Trevor-Roper (1914–2003), one of England’s foremost and controversial 20th-century historians, critics and essayists.
NBCC Award winner Sisman (The Friendship: Wordsworth and Coleridge, 2006, etc.) draws from archival correspondence and meticulous research, displaying a talent for balancing his subject’s flaws and strengths. By his own admission, Trevor-Roper was inclined toward “pride” as well as “imprudence, ostentation, volubility, and the need for company,” all of which manifested in various situations. Sisman successfully avoids turning the book into an account of a prickly, scholarly egoist who succumbed to hubris, a popular misconception. Trevor-Roper—who gained acclaim for investigating Hitler’s death and who was later panned for mistakenly stating that the Hitler diaries found in the early ’80s were authentic—emerges as a multilayered figure whose life should not be framed solely by these two widely publicized events. Though readers familiar with World War II intrigue and British radio intelligence will especially appreciate the chapters spanning the period, Sisman suggests that Trevor-Roper should also be remembered for his literary contributions and for the dignity he maintained despite heavy criticism. Leisurely in its pacing and studded with anecdotes that include major figures such as Winston Churchill, Henry Kissinger, Malcolm Muggeridge and Katharine Hepburn, the book considers how one man touched some of the most exclusive social circles while standing apart from them, and how he shaped public discourse with a formidable pen. Empathetic, illuminating and occasionally witty, if challenging in its depth and range of detail.
Pub Date: Dec. 6, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4000-6976-7
Page Count: 608
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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