A motivational tale of the changes people can make in the lives of others, given determination and a strong faith in right...
One man's mission to help change the world one school at a time.
When Ziolkowski first started his nonprofit organization, buildOn, he did so with a hope and a prayer—the hope that he and his group could build three schools in three different, desolate locations and a prayer to God that he was making the right decision on turning his back on a successful career in corporate finance to pursue his dream. He used his strong faith to aid him when times got rough, and from those humble beginnings, Ziolkowski's group has built more than 500 schools worldwide and assisted countless American schools with service-oriented programs. In straightforward, almost humble prose, the author, with the assistance of Hirsch (Willie Mays, 2010, etc.), recounts the fears and triumphs of the past two decades—for example, the incredible poverty and disease he encountered in places like Africa, Nicaragua and Brazil. What surprised him most was the incredible faith the local villagers placed in him and in buildOn and the extremes people went to in order to build a local school, with women lugging 100-pound sacks of cement on their backs up steep mountain trails. The women's desire for education and a better way of life for their children and generations to come motivated them to endure hardships beyond measure. As one African mother stated, "If you educate a boy, you educate one person. If you educate a girl, you educate an entire community.” Ziolkowski's Christian faith is a strong thread throughout the book, as he questions the motives behind his actions and always comes back full circle to the sanctity of his ambitions.
A motivational tale of the changes people can make in the lives of others, given determination and a strong faith in right and wrong.Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4516-8355-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2013
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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
