Tag: biography

A review of Poor Richard’s Women: Deborah Read Franklin and the Other Women Behind the Founding Father by Nancy Rubin Stuart

This book will be of interest perhaps most to Franklin fans who will appreciate the spotlight shifting from him to the multiple women who play secondary characters in his biographies.  It must be noted that Stuart does more than simply tell the stories of these players that usually otherwise merely populate the background of the US colonial and revolutionary drama; she offers several insightful and challenging reappraisals.

A review of Henry David Thoreau : A Life by Laura Dassow Walls

I reveled in this book because, unlike others before it, it is not fragmented, incongruent, or just a compilation of interesting facts. But rather, it reads as though Thoreau lived much more recently and the author had interviewed in-person, first-hand witnesses to his life simply because it flows from birth to death without a sense of missing information or lapses in time. On any given page you may learn about the weather that day or how late Thoreau stayed up as if it were all recorded and timestamped on videotape for the author to view and re-view.  

A Review of Heavier Than Heaven by Charles R. Cross

Author Charlie R. Cross gives readers a peek into Cobain’s brief life via the singer’s unpublished journal entries, letters, drawings, and home videos. Cobain’s widow and feminist icon Courtney Love gave Cross access to the documents, which was more than helpful because the singer was notoriously for keeping notes of all of his thoughts and experiences.

A review of Monash’s Masterpiece by Peter FitzSimons

I’m a military history aficionado, and the amount of information presented within this book is astonishing. I can only guess at how much research went into the preliminaries, and can see similarities to Sir John Monash’s extensive planning before the Battle of Le Hamel. I’m visualising somewhere in Mosman these large white-boards and spreadsheets travelling all around the walls of the FitzSimon’s operations-centre with countless pages of information attached to them.

A Review of Fire Road by Kim Phuc Phan Thi

A person who has experienced deep tragedy and lived to tell the story often comes to grips with profound truths along the way.  Such is the case with Phan Thi.  As she started her recovery, she had to endure daily baths to treat her burns.  She says, “Those baths were worse than death itself.  Dying is far worse than death.”  As I’ve observed this with people I know in my own life, I know this is a profound truth.

A review of Andrei Tarkovsky by Sean Martin

Andrei Tarkovsky An artist who set himself the task of capturing consciousness on the hoof, making tangible the fleeting quail of phenomenal experience, Tarkovsky made things hard for himself and harder still for all directors who would follow in his footsteps. Man, he set the bar high. Even Bergman, one of the true greats, acknowledges that he is without peer.