Nonfiction of the highest caliber: fascinating and thorough, but never sycophantic or overly familiar.
Prolific travel writer, journalist and novelist Iyer (Sun After Dark: Flights Into the Foreign, 2004, etc.) turns his judicious eye on the 14th Dalai Lama, with whom he has been acquainted for more than 30 years.
As a 17-year-old, the author traveled with his father into the Indian mountains and was introduced to the Dalai Lama, an encounter that struck him as a profound departure from the real world. The book takes its title from D.H. Lawrence, who once declared the open road to be “the great home of the Soul.” The most iconic Tibetan in the world has devoted his adult life to travel and encounters with strangers. The only Dalai Lama ever to have been outside of Tibet, he finds every door open to him, it seems, except the one that would welcome him back to the Chinese-occupied country of his birth. Described by the author as a “hyperrealist,” the Dalai Lama resides in the present moment more fully than in any geographical location. Iyer’s study includes a first-person account of interactions with his subject, as well as an incisive analysis of the modern relevance of Tibetan Buddhism and its leader. His portrait is entirely human, offering vignettes that convey multiple dimensions of the Dalai Lama’s personality, from his sense of humor and distinctive laughter to his political views and, in the words of Iyer’s father, “the freshness of [his] immense personal purity.” Questions about reality, existence, reincarnation and idolatry make this book resonate as an examination into subjects more substantial than one man’s life—the values that the Dalai Lama imparts have global reach and consequences.
Nonfiction of the highest caliber: fascinating and thorough, but never sycophantic or overly familiar.Pub Date: April 3, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-307-26760-3
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2008
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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