A lively chronicle of an eventful life told with style and rigor.
A biography of Gertrude Sanford Legendre, a wealthy socialite–turned–World War II spy.
Legendre was born in 1902 to an “ultra-wealthy family” in Aiken, South Carolina, and enjoyed an enviably privileged youth. However, she always yearned for adventure—a desire that biographer Smith (co-author: Eleanor Roosevelt Goes to Prison, 2019, etc.) stirringly depicts in these pages. In particular, Legendre developed a youthful “obsession with big game hunting,” according to Smith, shortly after graduating high school, and she traveled to Nairobi, Kenya, on a hunting expedition, during which she killed five lions. She later traveled to Ethiopia with the aim of bringing back an African antelope, the mountain nyala, for New York’s American Museum of Natural History—a mission she accomplished. During the halcyon days of the 1920s, she indulged in some “serious partying,” as the author puts it, on the French Riviera, but her life would take a dramatic turn during World War II. She was recruited to work for the American Office of the Coordinator of Information, the organizational precursor to the Office of Strategic Services, which eventually became the Central Intelligence Agency. She worked long hours at a cable desk in Washington, D.C., before being transferred to London, and she “reveled in being in the thick of war activity,” writes Smith. While on leave in Paris, she longed to get closer to the action and irresponsibly took a “joy ride” in enemy territory and was captured by German soldiers in Luxembourg. The dramatic crescendo of Smith’s action-packed portrait is Legendre’s daring escape from her captors across the Swiss border, and it’s a sequence of events worthy of a feature film. It’s clear that the author is enchanted by her subject, but she manages to avoid hagiography; for example, she includes evidence that Legendre didn’t get along well with her children. Still, for all her shortcomings, the book makes clear that she was a redoubtable force. As Smith puts it, Legendre truly “bucked many of the constraints of proper society that strait-jacketed so many of her female peers.”
A lively chronicle of an eventful life told with style and rigor.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-929647-44-6
Page Count: -
Publisher: Evening Post Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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