A retread of old material repackaged as an inspirational guidebook. Though aiming to inspire readers of all ages, this will...
The astronaut recounts life lessons learned from his historic Apollo 11 moonwalk in 1969 and beyond.
In this rambling, loosely structured, and frequently awkward hybrid of memoir and motivational self-help guide, Aldrin (Mission to Mars: My Vision for Space Exploration, 2013, etc.) treads heavily on familiar ground touched on extensively in other accounts of the moon mission, such as First on the Moon (1970), co-authored with fellow astronauts Neil Armstrong and Michael Collins, and Aldrin’s own previous memoirs, also relating to the Apollo 11 mission and his later struggles with alcoholism and depression. Aldrin attempts to shed light on some of the lessons he learned along the way. The author focuses each chapter on an inspirational message—e.g., “Keep your mind open to possibilities,” “Maintain your spirit of adventure,” “Keep a young mind-set at every age.” The message is sometimes disjointed. In “Second Comes Right After First,” Aldrin initially tells of how he came to embrace being the second man to step foot on the moon, following Armstrong, yet he spends much of the chapter asserting his claims for having been “first” in other areas of space exploration. Though the author has remained a dedicated and forceful advocate for the United States to continue planetary exploration, generously participating in fundraisers and providing educational support whenever needed, he has also increasingly applied his celebrity status to numerous guest appearances on TV shows such as 30 Rock, The Big Bang Theory, and The Simpsons and as a contestant on Dancing with the Stars. A few of his lessons boast of these appearances and his ability to successfully mix with the various talent.
A retread of old material repackaged as an inspirational guidebook. Though aiming to inspire readers of all ages, this will likely appeal to an older readership and devoted fans of Aldrin.Pub Date: April 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4262-1649-7
Page Count: 224
Publisher: National Geographic
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2016
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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