A welcome addition to the body of Medici literature.
An affectionate portrayal of the Renaissance statesman with a penchant for art and poetry.
New York Times contributor Unger (The Watercolors of Winslow Homer, 2001) lays out Lorenzo de’ Medici’s achievements in this well-balanced tome. Lorenzo’s birth in 1449 created the potential for a dynasty. His grandfather Cosimo ruled over Florence, his father Piero was Cosimo’s eldest son and Lorenzo was the first male Medici born since the family seized power in 1434. Unger describes the young Lorenzo as overawed by his grandfather’s reputation and worshipful of his grandmother, Contessina de’ Bardi. After Cosimo’s death in 1464, Piero put great responsibility on 15-year-old Lorenzo’s shoulders; indeed, the boy was referred to as “the hope of the city” by many Medici partisans. Unger draws on letters sent to and from the Medici family to enrich his tale and also includes extracts from Lorenzo’s poetry, the exegeses of which are among the book’s most illuminating passages. Lorenzo shared his grandparents’ and parents’ affinity for all the arts. He used his associations with such Renaissance figures as Botticelli and Michelangelo to impress European leaders, and these artists in turn received the Medici family’s generous patronage. Lorenzo’s fondness for poetry, art and literature should not be underestimated, asserts the author, a stance that differs from recent scholars who have contended that his influence over Florentine artists may not have been so great as is often assumed. Many of these arguments, writes Unger, such as whether Lorenzo commissioned Botticelli’s Primavera, are mere quibbles when set against the creative atmosphere that the great statesman fostered. Further extracts from poetry written toward the end of Lorenzo’s life, which detail his fragile state of mind, bring the book to a neat conclusion.
A welcome addition to the body of Medici literature.Pub Date: May 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-7432-5434-2
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2008
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
© Copyright 2025 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.
