Very slow-moving, but informative.
A biography of the only mapmaker nonspecialists are likely to have heard of.
Mercator (1512–94) was born in Flanders as Gerard de Cremer, Latinizing his name, as did many learned men of his day. British historian Taylor (God's Fugitive, 1999) begins with a summary of the state of geography in the early 16th century, built, as it was, on such ancient authorities as Ptolemy but incorporating recent discoveries in the Americas and Asia. Mercator, he believes, was drawn to geography and cartography as disciplines that combined classical knowledge with the heady news being brought by returning adventurers to port cities all over Europe. At the same time, a good mapmaker could make a great deal of money by supplying the rich and powerful with accurate maps and globes. In Mercator’s case, even at the apprentice stage of his career, his craftsmanship set him apart. By age 30, he was doing commissions for clients ranging from Spain’s Charles V to the Turkish Sultan: maps of England, Lorraine, and Europe; atlases; and matched pairs of terrestrial and celestial globes. For all, he drew on the most current information he could gather, whether Copernicus’s sky maps or documents from the recent English Arctic expeditions. His careful courtship of the powerful stood him in good stead even when, in 1543, for reasons Taylor can only speculate on, he fell afoul of the Inquisition. On his release, he moved to Duisberg, in Cleves, where for the rest of his life he managed to avoid the bitter religious conflicts sweeping Europe. In 1569, he produced his masterpiece: a large (53 x 84 inches) world map based on the cylindrical projection that has become permanently associated with his name. Taylor methodically fills in the details both of Mercator’s career and its historical context, and he concludes by arguing that Mercator was, on the whole, a true scientist despite the limitations his era imposed on him.
Very slow-moving, but informative.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-8027-1377-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Walker
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2004
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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