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Whipping Boy: The Forty-Year Search for My Twelve-Year-Old Bully―An Edgar Award Winner
Winner of the Edgar® Award for Best Fact Crime The true account of one boy’s lifelong search for his boarding-school bully. Equal parts childhood memoir and literary thriller, Whipping Boy chronicles prize-winning author Allen Kurzweil’s search for his twelve-year-old nemesis, a bully named Cesar Augustus. The obsessive inquiry, which spans some forty years, takes Kurzweil all over the world, from a Swiss boarding school (where he endures horrifying cruelty) to the slums of Manila, from the Park Avenue boardroom of the world’s largest law firm to a federal prison camp in Southern California. While hunting down his tormentor, Kurzweil encounters an improbable cast of characters that includes an elocution teacher with ill-fitting dentures, a gang of faux royal swindlers, a crime investigator “with paper in his blood,” and a onocled grand master of the Knights of Malta. Yet for all its global exoticism and comic exuberance, Kurzweil’s riveting account is, at its core, a heartfelt and suspenseful narrative about the “parallel lives” of a victim and his abuser. A scrupulously researched work of nonfiction that renders a childhood menace into an unlikely muse, Whipping Boy is much more than a tale of karmic retribution; it is a poignant meditation on loss, memory, and mourning, a surreal odyssey born out of suffering, nourished by rancor, tempered by wit, and resolved, unexpectedly, in a breathtaking act of personal courage. Whipping Boy features two 8-page black-and-white photo inserts and 83 images throughout.
320 pages, Paperback
First published January 12, 2015
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1696 people want to read
About the author
Allen Kurzweil
13 books35 followersAllen Kurzweil is an American novelist, journalist, editor, and lecturer. He is the author of four works of fiction, most notably A Case of Curiosities, as well as a memoir Whipping Boy. He is also the co-inventor, with his son Max, of Potato Chip Science, an eco-friendly experiment kit for grade schoolers. He is a cousin of Ray Kurzweil and brother of Vivien Schmidt.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 191 reviews
April 30, 2020
I liked ‘Whipping Boy’, but it is a difficult book to categorize in several ways. There is no way I can predict how the book will be for you, gentle reader, at all, since personal predilections will come into play in a truly big way, I think. Because of several content oddities, readers may be irritated or bored after reading a hundred pages, and end up skimming or returning the book to the library as a ‘dnf’. The publishing company's marketing department has done a bit of descriptive bait-'n-switch.
'Whipping Boy’ is marketed as a non-fiction story combining the library classifications of memoir and true crime, which are partially true. The author, Allen Kurzweil, relates his life story and his research into a fraud case which went to trial and resulted in convictions. My library classified the book as a biography, which it partially is, as it tells the life story, briefly and incomplete, of the ‘bully’, Cesar Augustus, who was involved in the fraud case. Other libraries classify the book simply as an autobiography. In my opinion, half of the book could be classified and placed where libraries file books about financial scandals such as those about Enron, Lehman Brothers, UBS, HSBC and LIBOR, and frauds by members of the Big Five accounting firms. Libraries usually sort such book's under Social Sciences (300 in the Dewey Decimal System). This book contains a lot of detail about a similar type of financial fraud, including author interviews with some of the case’s principals and investigators.
The subject matter is interesting if readers enjoy reading trauma autobiographies and business histories and books about white-collar crime, which usually are in separate books but not always, as in this book.
The material of the book includes an autobiographical first-person narration of Allen Kurzweil’s life, as I previously mentioned; a history of the decades-long search by the author, using Google and personal contacts, to find the whereabouts of the bully, Cesar, who haunts Kurzweil’s mind and his entire life; and research by the author leading to a in-depth description of a white-collar bank fraud committed by a company called Badische Trust.
The story is excellently organized as far as the timeline of events, although some general readers may hate the stitching together of genre types. The tone of the book veers wildly between journalistic, even sometimes academic, competence, and trembling juvenile uncertainty.
Adding to the mixing up of emotional tone in the book, the people who were behind the fraudulent Badisch Trust presented themselves in the manner of vaudevillian actors. They inhabited the roles of aristocrat gentlemen as if they were intentionally performing as obvious stereotypes from central casting, so a feeling of amazement that they succeeded in tricking smart people is definitely appropriate.
Every true story begins with a person remembering what happened, and then talking about it. The longer a person speaks, the more indirect information a listener hears and sees - verbal ticks, facial expressions, tone of voice, habitual tells - all that stuff between the lines which communicates so much visually to observers. Harder to figure out and put in context are the more general or opaque expressions and body movements, many of which are open to a number of interpretations, which is why knowing a person helps. Between-the-lines communication clues also occur with memoirs and autobiographies, except that indirect information is transmitted by word choices and what incidents and emotions are emphasized or diminished, what pictures and documents are included, and if there was a ghost writer or a translator.
The reproducible research, memories which are verified by other witnesses, and documented events a book includes, the length of time covered in a book, the credentials of involved interview subjects, what the book describes that Google searches find elsewhere that back up described scenes, facts and incidents - all can be very important to many autobiographies (of course, some autobiographies are completely unverifiable and must be taken on trust). A good grasp of potential human behavior, developed through experience, helps.
Despite the marketing of the book advertising it as being about a search for a childhood bully, which it is, it seemed to me the bully incident, while maybe affecting the author’s mentality for the rest of his life, is sort of a mcguffin in final analysis of the book’s material.
Kurzweil is a writer of children's books and science articles. He has received much academic recognition and rewards in grants. Frankly, he speaks in conversations using a dialogue approach as if he were still a young boy of ten given the impression I have reached from this book, but nonetheless he is a fantastic detective and a productive journalist when he is on the job. Somehow. Plus he is married with a son. E and his family all are highly educated.
I really think the book is a three-star and a half rating in considering his personal style of composing speech, if the way he self-reveals in the book is accurate, but the book is five-star as far as rating his research and perseverance, sporadic as it is. He paints his tenacity as occurring because of his anxiety and panic issues. Omg, does his anxiety really show, and man, it really grates and annoys in the reading of his memoir sections. I can see why he might prefer to stick to children's books.
Although it is non-fiction, lengthy dialogue is included, most of which reminded me of the speaking manner of the childish and ignorant criminals in Elmore Leonard novels. Although the book’s conversations are between the author and family, contacts, and professionals, the impression I got of the author is one of an insecure juvenility. For me, this was very annoying. It may not be true, but that is how it seemed to me, and I was very irritated.
I actually checked out both the audiobook and the hardcover of ‘Whipping Boy’ by accident. For fun, I listened AND read along. As it happened, the audiobook is narrated by the author. He has a speech cadence of talking in three - words, syllables, phrases - with a pause between each set of three, regardless of the sentence. This added to the impression of juvenility because it was done in such a nervous anxious manner! Kurzweil admits to having an anxiety disorder, as well as probably being obsessive. This book would not have been written, I think, if those two things about the author were not true, but yikes!
What made me feel the author himself was an annoying human being was the author’s tone of dancing around in a hot skillet when discussing his reaction to his personal history - before, during and after ‘the whipping incident’. He appears to be someone uncomfortable with ‘owning his feelings and emotions’ as they say in publicity-speak.
I know we GR reviewers are supposed to be circumspect in discussing living authors. So. Allen Kurzwell comes off as an odd duck. He may be an overly anxious person. He may be obsessive, too. He might ‘try too hard socially’ as well. He might have hobbies that he obsesses over, the obsession of which deeply embarrasses him, similar to a collector of silver spoons who is embarrassed he is obsessive and collects silver spoons. He might be none of these things in real life, but it is how he appears when writing of himself. It is annoying on the page whenever the subject is his reaction to events. It seems SO painfully awkward and wrong-footed, it is like dealing with a teenage nerd in middle school to read these parts of his book.
In the end, I am not surprised he was ultimately picked on by his roommates in a boarding school if my impression from his memoir portion is correct. That said, I do NOT accept bullying in any shape or form, especially that involving torture. However, I kept wanting to reach into the pages and swat the author upside his head.
*ahem*
There is a graphic scene of boy wolfpack violence early in the book, and pictures of the people the author profiles (not of the violence, which happened behind closed doors when the author was a ten-year-old student). A lengthy section of Acknowledgements make clear the author went to many experts and principals involved in the fraud and at the Swiss boarding school he attended.
'Whipping Boy’ is marketed as a non-fiction story combining the library classifications of memoir and true crime, which are partially true. The author, Allen Kurzweil, relates his life story and his research into a fraud case which went to trial and resulted in convictions. My library classified the book as a biography, which it partially is, as it tells the life story, briefly and incomplete, of the ‘bully’, Cesar Augustus, who was involved in the fraud case. Other libraries classify the book simply as an autobiography. In my opinion, half of the book could be classified and placed where libraries file books about financial scandals such as those about Enron, Lehman Brothers, UBS, HSBC and LIBOR, and frauds by members of the Big Five accounting firms. Libraries usually sort such book's under Social Sciences (300 in the Dewey Decimal System). This book contains a lot of detail about a similar type of financial fraud, including author interviews with some of the case’s principals and investigators.
The subject matter is interesting if readers enjoy reading trauma autobiographies and business histories and books about white-collar crime, which usually are in separate books but not always, as in this book.
The material of the book includes an autobiographical first-person narration of Allen Kurzweil’s life, as I previously mentioned; a history of the decades-long search by the author, using Google and personal contacts, to find the whereabouts of the bully, Cesar, who haunts Kurzweil’s mind and his entire life; and research by the author leading to a in-depth description of a white-collar bank fraud committed by a company called Badische Trust.
The story is excellently organized as far as the timeline of events, although some general readers may hate the stitching together of genre types. The tone of the book veers wildly between journalistic, even sometimes academic, competence, and trembling juvenile uncertainty.
Adding to the mixing up of emotional tone in the book, the people who were behind the fraudulent Badisch Trust presented themselves in the manner of vaudevillian actors. They inhabited the roles of aristocrat gentlemen as if they were intentionally performing as obvious stereotypes from central casting, so a feeling of amazement that they succeeded in tricking smart people is definitely appropriate.
Every true story begins with a person remembering what happened, and then talking about it. The longer a person speaks, the more indirect information a listener hears and sees - verbal ticks, facial expressions, tone of voice, habitual tells - all that stuff between the lines which communicates so much visually to observers. Harder to figure out and put in context are the more general or opaque expressions and body movements, many of which are open to a number of interpretations, which is why knowing a person helps. Between-the-lines communication clues also occur with memoirs and autobiographies, except that indirect information is transmitted by word choices and what incidents and emotions are emphasized or diminished, what pictures and documents are included, and if there was a ghost writer or a translator.
The reproducible research, memories which are verified by other witnesses, and documented events a book includes, the length of time covered in a book, the credentials of involved interview subjects, what the book describes that Google searches find elsewhere that back up described scenes, facts and incidents - all can be very important to many autobiographies (of course, some autobiographies are completely unverifiable and must be taken on trust). A good grasp of potential human behavior, developed through experience, helps.
Despite the marketing of the book advertising it as being about a search for a childhood bully, which it is, it seemed to me the bully incident, while maybe affecting the author’s mentality for the rest of his life, is sort of a mcguffin in final analysis of the book’s material.
Kurzweil is a writer of children's books and science articles. He has received much academic recognition and rewards in grants. Frankly, he speaks in conversations using a dialogue approach as if he were still a young boy of ten given the impression I have reached from this book, but nonetheless he is a fantastic detective and a productive journalist when he is on the job. Somehow. Plus he is married with a son. E and his family all are highly educated.
I really think the book is a three-star and a half rating in considering his personal style of composing speech, if the way he self-reveals in the book is accurate, but the book is five-star as far as rating his research and perseverance, sporadic as it is. He paints his tenacity as occurring because of his anxiety and panic issues. Omg, does his anxiety really show, and man, it really grates and annoys in the reading of his memoir sections. I can see why he might prefer to stick to children's books.
Although it is non-fiction, lengthy dialogue is included, most of which reminded me of the speaking manner of the childish and ignorant criminals in Elmore Leonard novels. Although the book’s conversations are between the author and family, contacts, and professionals, the impression I got of the author is one of an insecure juvenility. For me, this was very annoying. It may not be true, but that is how it seemed to me, and I was very irritated.
I actually checked out both the audiobook and the hardcover of ‘Whipping Boy’ by accident. For fun, I listened AND read along. As it happened, the audiobook is narrated by the author. He has a speech cadence of talking in three - words, syllables, phrases - with a pause between each set of three, regardless of the sentence. This added to the impression of juvenility because it was done in such a nervous anxious manner! Kurzweil admits to having an anxiety disorder, as well as probably being obsessive. This book would not have been written, I think, if those two things about the author were not true, but yikes!
What made me feel the author himself was an annoying human being was the author’s tone of dancing around in a hot skillet when discussing his reaction to his personal history - before, during and after ‘the whipping incident’. He appears to be someone uncomfortable with ‘owning his feelings and emotions’ as they say in publicity-speak.
I know we GR reviewers are supposed to be circumspect in discussing living authors. So. Allen Kurzwell comes off as an odd duck. He may be an overly anxious person. He may be obsessive, too. He might ‘try too hard socially’ as well. He might have hobbies that he obsesses over, the obsession of which deeply embarrasses him, similar to a collector of silver spoons who is embarrassed he is obsessive and collects silver spoons. He might be none of these things in real life, but it is how he appears when writing of himself. It is annoying on the page whenever the subject is his reaction to events. It seems SO painfully awkward and wrong-footed, it is like dealing with a teenage nerd in middle school to read these parts of his book.
In the end, I am not surprised he was ultimately picked on by his roommates in a boarding school if my impression from his memoir portion is correct. That said, I do NOT accept bullying in any shape or form, especially that involving torture. However, I kept wanting to reach into the pages and swat the author upside his head.
*ahem*
There is a graphic scene of boy wolfpack violence early in the book, and pictures of the people the author profiles (not of the violence, which happened behind closed doors when the author was a ten-year-old student). A lengthy section of Acknowledgements make clear the author went to many experts and principals involved in the fraud and at the Swiss boarding school he attended.
April 29, 2020
Two stars means it was ok. This book is divided into two parts, more or less. The beginning sets up the bully aspect. The second part talks about the "mystery" of what happened to the bully as time went by.
First off, the author is not likable. He is extremely spiteful and the catalyst of the entire book, a stolen watch, just made me feel like he is a touch greedy. The author is an extremely angry man. At times, he seems to relish the fact that he feels like he has been bullied and victimized. This guy also, at one point, likens himself to Darwin, Dickens, Orwell, and Golding.....ALL IN THE SAME PARAGRAPH! All these things and the sneaking suspicion that I can't believe anything he says ruined the beginning of the book. I can't explain why I think he fabricates certain aspects, I just do. That's the first part of the book.
Then we get to the second part of the book. The true crime side is actually pretty decent. Beside some cowardly "should I or should I not" internal self-inflicted angst and decisions, it gets pretty interesting. Most is just interviews and fact transcription from the trial. By far the best part of the book. The guy stops thinking about himself for a while.
The end gets pretty preachy. I don't know, I thought journalism was supposed to be a little less biased. I guess that's the nature of this book and the way the author writes. I'm not really into that. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone, but, I think(?) I'm glad I read it.
First off, the author is not likable. He is extremely spiteful and the catalyst of the entire book, a stolen watch, just made me feel like he is a touch greedy. The author is an extremely angry man. At times, he seems to relish the fact that he feels like he has been bullied and victimized. This guy also, at one point, likens himself to Darwin, Dickens, Orwell, and Golding.....ALL IN THE SAME PARAGRAPH! All these things and the sneaking suspicion that I can't believe anything he says ruined the beginning of the book. I can't explain why I think he fabricates certain aspects, I just do. That's the first part of the book.
Then we get to the second part of the book. The true crime side is actually pretty decent. Beside some cowardly "should I or should I not" internal self-inflicted angst and decisions, it gets pretty interesting. Most is just interviews and fact transcription from the trial. By far the best part of the book. The guy stops thinking about himself for a while.
The end gets pretty preachy. I don't know, I thought journalism was supposed to be a little less biased. I guess that's the nature of this book and the way the author writes. I'm not really into that. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone, but, I think(?) I'm glad I read it.
March 4, 2015
A compelling story that wears thin after awhile, particularly where sympathy with the author is concerned. The tale of the scam, while outrageous, seems less horrific in light of more recent Wall Street news. It's not always the case that a bully is motivated by anything other than nastiness, but it's a question that requires at least some exploration.And while I don't doubt Cesar was a bully and a criminal who employed the pity play in full force in his court testimony, Kurzweill's failure to examine racial discrimination as a potential motivator--Cesar was a nonwhite kid at a Swiss boarding school in the early 70s-- is made more questionable with lines like this: "When I ask (Cesar's mother) about her son's nationality, I'm told that he's half Venezuelan, half Asian, half Latino, and half Filipino American. Which in a way kind of makes sense, because nothing about Cesar adds up."
We all have a bully or two who haunts us through childhood, but Kurzweill's stalking of Cesar, his secret gloating over his misattribution of quotes and sunken economic status almost made me root for the guy.
We all have a bully or two who haunts us through childhood, but Kurzweill's stalking of Cesar, his secret gloating over his misattribution of quotes and sunken economic status almost made me root for the guy.
May 28, 2015
If you enjoyed the podcast Serial, with its long slow search for journalistic truth that gets stranger and stranger as more is revealed, you might enjoy this book. I think the writer's repeated insistence that these facts were true was necessary... it was honestly difficult to believe the details of the crazy scam.
More reflection on the author's part about why go on the search, what was he seeking personally - a little deeper thought could have made the book stronger. He kind of just kept saying, well, it's this crazy obsession that I had. But there had to be something meaningful in it.
But well-reported personal narrative with wild scams and con men thrown in ... I can get into that.
More reflection on the author's part about why go on the search, what was he seeking personally - a little deeper thought could have made the book stronger. He kind of just kept saying, well, it's this crazy obsession that I had. But there had to be something meaningful in it.
But well-reported personal narrative with wild scams and con men thrown in ... I can get into that.
January 21, 2015
With out a doubt, one of the best books I've read in a long while. Certainly the only one I've read cover-to-cover in one sitting in I don't know how long. Exhaustively researched and, thanks to Kurzweil's experience as a novelist, impeccably paced and written. I kept thinking of the movie, The Usual Suspects. Kurzweil's bully becomes this kind of Keyser Söze-type character, and we all know what that means: "The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist."
October 4, 2020
Fiction author Allen Kurzweil writes an account of the abuse he suffered during one year in a boarding school in Switzerland at the hands of one pudgy 12-year-old, and then the many years spent obsessing over this boy and the search for what became of him. What he finds is so intriguing as to make his previous obsession, a mere gnawing at his memory over the decades, look like complete indifference in comparison. It seems Cesar Augustus, the bully, grew up to be a shill for a network of fraudsters so globe-spanning, intricate, and utterly preposterous that it would be reviled as too ludicrous to be believed if it were written into a heist film.
This book is really two types of story in one, both immensely intriguing. The first section is a memoir of a school very much no longer in vogue, modeled after the old British system in which the students are expected to govern themselves and go on expeditions in the mountains more or less unchaperoned. With such antiquated staff as elocution and ski instructors, the school forbid the students to have money, instead giving out points for good behavior with which they would buy things in the nearby village, and penalizing infractions with laps or downgrades in status. (Here I wondered at an omission that is striking its absence: the total lack of even a hint of sexual impropriety at the school. With older children placed in positions of authority over younger ones, and the founder apparently having a habit of taking favored boys to expeditions to places such as the Cote d'Azur, it seems strange to me that Kurzweil has nothing to say about the possibility.) In any case, in such a place, bullying of course was rampant, and Cesar is a typical example, whipping the young Allen with a belt, calling him an anti-Semitic name, and stealing his late father's watch. While what Cesar does is undeniably horrible, there's a lot more opportunity for much worse sadism and harm than actually happens, so to me, the impact that Kurzweil places on this single school year seemed somewhat out of proportion. However, it's a good thing for readers of crazy true stories that he did remember it, because it allows us to enjoy the fantastic story of Cesar's adult criminal escapades. A colorful group of rogues, claiming to be princes, dukes, and colonels, hoodwink people into giving them earnest money for purported multi-billion loans. By obtaining associations with large banks and reputed law firms, the group was able to appear legit, despite their eccentric, bizarre behavior (the royal titles, odd rituals they insisted upon when signing contracts, forcing their victims to write letters of apology to their fictitious bank for questioning it, and so on). After the lurid details of the scam are over, the last section of the book deals with Kurzweil's meeting up with Cesar, now out of prison and into several other iffy business ventures. This section isn't as incredible, but he conveys the anxiety of confronting a childhood fear quite well. Throughout, Kurzweil tries to draw parallels between the school and Cesar's prison, the school's atmosphere and some elements of the fraud, and his and Cesar's upbringing. Some of these parallels may be stretches, but the closure Kurzweil achieves is worth the obsession.
This book is really two types of story in one, both immensely intriguing. The first section is a memoir of a school very much no longer in vogue, modeled after the old British system in which the students are expected to govern themselves and go on expeditions in the mountains more or less unchaperoned. With such antiquated staff as elocution and ski instructors, the school forbid the students to have money, instead giving out points for good behavior with which they would buy things in the nearby village, and penalizing infractions with laps or downgrades in status. (Here I wondered at an omission that is striking its absence: the total lack of even a hint of sexual impropriety at the school. With older children placed in positions of authority over younger ones, and the founder apparently having a habit of taking favored boys to expeditions to places such as the Cote d'Azur, it seems strange to me that Kurzweil has nothing to say about the possibility.) In any case, in such a place, bullying of course was rampant, and Cesar is a typical example, whipping the young Allen with a belt, calling him an anti-Semitic name, and stealing his late father's watch. While what Cesar does is undeniably horrible, there's a lot more opportunity for much worse sadism and harm than actually happens, so to me, the impact that Kurzweil places on this single school year seemed somewhat out of proportion. However, it's a good thing for readers of crazy true stories that he did remember it, because it allows us to enjoy the fantastic story of Cesar's adult criminal escapades. A colorful group of rogues, claiming to be princes, dukes, and colonels, hoodwink people into giving them earnest money for purported multi-billion loans. By obtaining associations with large banks and reputed law firms, the group was able to appear legit, despite their eccentric, bizarre behavior (the royal titles, odd rituals they insisted upon when signing contracts, forcing their victims to write letters of apology to their fictitious bank for questioning it, and so on). After the lurid details of the scam are over, the last section of the book deals with Kurzweil's meeting up with Cesar, now out of prison and into several other iffy business ventures. This section isn't as incredible, but he conveys the anxiety of confronting a childhood fear quite well. Throughout, Kurzweil tries to draw parallels between the school and Cesar's prison, the school's atmosphere and some elements of the fraud, and his and Cesar's upbringing. Some of these parallels may be stretches, but the closure Kurzweil achieves is worth the obsession.
February 8, 2021
Formative experiences in childhood shape who we are as adults, and for many of us, some of the most intense experiences involved bullies.
In this unique book, a middle-aged writer tracks down the person who once bullied him mercilessly in boarding school in the 1970s--and discovers some very surprising things about both his former nemesis and himself.
I'm not going to lie, some of the stuff about the loan scams the adult bully engaged in was way too technical and boring for me. However, I think the book also had some decent insight about people and incidents taking up unwanted residence in our heads and our propensity to let things that happened when we were children exert undue influence on the rest of our lives.
In this unique book, a middle-aged writer tracks down the person who once bullied him mercilessly in boarding school in the 1970s--and discovers some very surprising things about both his former nemesis and himself.
I'm not going to lie, some of the stuff about the loan scams the adult bully engaged in was way too technical and boring for me. However, I think the book also had some decent insight about people and incidents taking up unwanted residence in our heads and our propensity to let things that happened when we were children exert undue influence on the rest of our lives.
December 17, 2015
This was okay, not one of my favorite or even middle of the road likes. It's not great as an audiobook.
February 23, 2015
I was exhausted just reading this book. It's the true account of one boy’s lifelong search for his boarding-school bully. The actual part of the bullying is quite short. The rest of the book is some extraordinary detailed account of at first, the possible bully and his entourage of scam artists. I mean DETAILED. The whole book is then derailed by the actual scam, who was in on it, the people in the Justice system that were involved, and eventually the author's meeting face to face with his "tormentor". I have no doubt that Allen's victimization at the hands of his bully was traumatic. I did expect however some kind of account of Allen's inner thoughts about the bullying and how they impacted him throughout his life. That he got all involved and felt the need to write about the scam and all the different characters of the scam was not only boring, but really hard to comprehend that this was a book about searching for Cesear. Reading the publishing accolades about this book about it being a "literary thriller", "a memoir that reads like a thriller", now that I've finished it, makes he nothing but annoyed.
March 6, 2018
I almost quit reading the book. If the bully wouldn't have turned out to be interesting, neither would the book. The main reason I started to get interested was the bully turned out to be a defendant in the courthouse where I work. I didn't feel as bad for the author as maybe I should have, which made me feel like a bad person. But it's also hard not to yell out loud "Get over it!" at times. I guess it's good insight into how things can traumatize you as a child, though I felt like this guy was just looking to capitalize off it, which didn't seem to fully pay off. Lucky for him his bully had a good story to tell.
November 7, 2014
Enjoyed this one. Part memoir, part true crime. Readable, often affecting, even moving. Holy Golden Wheel of Karma! What goes around does come around! An engaging read.
January 25, 2021
I was completely swept up in this unique story. The author took me along with his story, the journey was fascinating; there was a lot of subtle humor and a lot of pain. Kurzweil sets out to look for a childhood bully and when he finds him, wow.
March 15, 2015
Good book... Author ends up learning almost as much about himself as he does his bully. Very enjoyable read.
August 6, 2021
This book deals with a trauma of a different kind - bullying in school. It really starts off as an anatomy of revenge. Till the author meets his nemesis face to face, who had forgotten him. The author is gobsmacked: "Is it really possible that a boy I will never forget has all but forgotten me?"
I'm happy to note that the author finally finds catharsis. The book on the whole was interesting. But large parts were distracting due to the authors attempts at amplifying the fraud which was not crucial to the story. I wanted to know more about Cesar, his bete noir, who turned out to be a victim just like the author.
I wondered if the author has not done a disservice by putting out in public his misdeeds, and magnifying the bullying when in reality, the bullying might have been a forgettable part of childhood! Probably the loss of a precious gift given by his late father and the feeling of guilt associated with it, had more to do with it.
I'm happy to note that the author finally finds catharsis. The book on the whole was interesting. But large parts were distracting due to the authors attempts at amplifying the fraud which was not crucial to the story. I wanted to know more about Cesar, his bete noir, who turned out to be a victim just like the author.
I wondered if the author has not done a disservice by putting out in public his misdeeds, and magnifying the bullying when in reality, the bullying might have been a forgettable part of childhood! Probably the loss of a precious gift given by his late father and the feeling of guilt associated with it, had more to do with it.
August 6, 2017
This was an outstanding read. The author, wanting to work through his Swiss-boarding-school-bully issues, sets out to find the roommate who made him so miserable in 1971 and 1972. Like every book I attempt to read that supposedly has nothing to do with crime, this one turned into an epic of true-crime investigative journalism -- but this one was touched with a strange magic. No matter where this guy went and how unwelcome he was when he got there, he discovered that all doors opened for him as soon as he told them his reason for being there. "I had a bully, too," they all said, handing over the information he wanted. Written in a light, tongue-in-cheek way that made the book speed by. Full of remarkable coincidences that make the story seem almost fated to happen this way.
February 9, 2018
This has been probably the hardest book for me to rate to date. The bullying is interesting, the international con, interesting, with a plausible ending. But I kept thinking, you spent 40 years thinking about the guy who tortured you as a 12 year old? What a colossal waste of time!! Tell yourself he's a shmutz and move on. Find something worthwhile - oh I don't know, like a hobby! But on the other hand he did turn this whole thing into something physically productive, like a book, but still!!! I think if this book had been told from a different perspective, I might've given it 4 stars, but no can do. Now on to the actual "Whipping Boy" I meant to read, that was the Newbery Award winner.
January 21, 2019
This is a memoir that sort of becomes true crime. It’s fast paced. Which is a plus, as I don’t think I could have finished it if it had been drawn out. The author tracks his journey to find the boy who bullied him as a child with fairly predictable results. Though not what the author expected. A reasonably interesting read.
January 10, 2015
Whipping Boy: The Forty-Year Search for My Twelve-Year-Old Bully by Allen Kurzweil is a very highly recommended account of a man ostensibly searching for a bully. What he finds in his search is much more interesting and satisfying.
When Kurzweil was 10, he attended Aiglon College, a British-style boarding school located in the Swiss Alps, above Geneva. When there one of his roommates, Cesar Augustus, took delight in tormenting him. Kurzweil shares several incidents that traumatized him during this one year of his childhood and how the specter of Cesar loomed large in his adult life. He still remembered the verbal and physical torment Cesar put him through and his emotional pain was still present.
As an adult, Kurzweil decided to do some research to try and discover what happened to Cesar and what he did with his life. There was, also, always present the idea of payback, or confrontation of Cesar for what he did to Kurzweil.
What Kurzweil discovers is far more interesting than even he could have imagined. Cesar was part of a huge global banking scam that swindled millions of dollars from unsuspecting clients. It was run by the Badische Trust Consortium and Cesar was part of the group of scam artists, many posing as European aristocrats, who ran the con. Several members, including Cesar, had been imprisoned for their felonious deceit. "The consolidated rap sheet of the Badische gang included embezzlement, racketeering, arson, forgery, fraud, extortion, perjury, check kiting, probation violation, grand larceny, assault and battery, and domestic abuse."
In the end this is less a book about searching for Cesar, the bully, and more the story of researching Cesar and the members of the Badische Trust Consortium. There is a satisfying meeting/discussion with Cesar. Kurzweil ends with an enlightening revelation/discovery about freeing himself from the memories of his bully.
This well written, detailed account, while partially a memoir, is most certainly an engaging true crime thriller as Kurzweil researches the Badische scam artists and their crimes through the court records, etc. he is given access to use in his search. Even though his research began as a search for his bully, he found a much more interesting story in which Cesar is a bit player. Yes, he is a scam artist, but he is not the most interesting character in the search. I found myself hoping he would be able to find and confront his bully, but what Kurzweil discovers is so much more and made for a fascinating, intriguing nonfiction account of his search. Whipping Boy includes 16 pages of black-and-white photos and 83 images.
Disclosure: My Kindle edition was courtesy of HarperCollin for review purposes.
New Yorker Article
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/201...
When Kurzweil was 10, he attended Aiglon College, a British-style boarding school located in the Swiss Alps, above Geneva. When there one of his roommates, Cesar Augustus, took delight in tormenting him. Kurzweil shares several incidents that traumatized him during this one year of his childhood and how the specter of Cesar loomed large in his adult life. He still remembered the verbal and physical torment Cesar put him through and his emotional pain was still present.
As an adult, Kurzweil decided to do some research to try and discover what happened to Cesar and what he did with his life. There was, also, always present the idea of payback, or confrontation of Cesar for what he did to Kurzweil.
What Kurzweil discovers is far more interesting than even he could have imagined. Cesar was part of a huge global banking scam that swindled millions of dollars from unsuspecting clients. It was run by the Badische Trust Consortium and Cesar was part of the group of scam artists, many posing as European aristocrats, who ran the con. Several members, including Cesar, had been imprisoned for their felonious deceit. "The consolidated rap sheet of the Badische gang included embezzlement, racketeering, arson, forgery, fraud, extortion, perjury, check kiting, probation violation, grand larceny, assault and battery, and domestic abuse."
In the end this is less a book about searching for Cesar, the bully, and more the story of researching Cesar and the members of the Badische Trust Consortium. There is a satisfying meeting/discussion with Cesar. Kurzweil ends with an enlightening revelation/discovery about freeing himself from the memories of his bully.
This well written, detailed account, while partially a memoir, is most certainly an engaging true crime thriller as Kurzweil researches the Badische scam artists and their crimes through the court records, etc. he is given access to use in his search. Even though his research began as a search for his bully, he found a much more interesting story in which Cesar is a bit player. Yes, he is a scam artist, but he is not the most interesting character in the search. I found myself hoping he would be able to find and confront his bully, but what Kurzweil discovers is so much more and made for a fascinating, intriguing nonfiction account of his search. Whipping Boy includes 16 pages of black-and-white photos and 83 images.
Disclosure: My Kindle edition was courtesy of HarperCollin for review purposes.
New Yorker Article
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/201...
May 23, 2015
I really enjoyed this book. I would STRONGLY recommend it to anyone. It is quite an amazing story about the lengths some people will apparently go to deceive others as well as themselves as well as how we might each impact on someone's life without necessarily intending to do so.
This is a very readable book even though I gather it ventures into pathways we may not all be too familiar with such as Boarding schools in Switzerland, the offices of "the biggest law firm in the world," and to an elaborate million (or even billion dollar) fraud scheme. It is hard to conceive that all of it is true and I almost think is Kurzweil seemingly deceiving us--which most assuredly he is not....he sounds like someone I'd like to go camping with...and/or with his son and/or wife who also seem like delightful people for putting up with Allen's antics. I might have glossed over SPOILER ALERT: the pranks Ceaser played on him at the boarder school. I'm sorry but they seemed to amount to me as "nothing more" than fraternity hazing (which I personally find repulsive) but in boarding school obviously it takes on a different dimension but for gods sake after 40 years you would think Allen would have "gotten over it"? But it is a fascinating story...I loved it...and what Ceasar fell into afterwards...OMG...I'd love to know this bully's reaction to the book.
A few years back I ventured into Facebook...I too had my grade school bully...but sort of took care of him (but that is another tale)but I did "meet up" with a few good people I long lost touch with including someone who strangely said they had "a bone to pick with me " from years ago and while ( at least to the best of my knowledge) am no felon I can't for the life of me know what I might have done.
Please read this book and let me know what you think.
This is a very readable book even though I gather it ventures into pathways we may not all be too familiar with such as Boarding schools in Switzerland, the offices of "the biggest law firm in the world," and to an elaborate million (or even billion dollar) fraud scheme. It is hard to conceive that all of it is true and I almost think is Kurzweil seemingly deceiving us--which most assuredly he is not....he sounds like someone I'd like to go camping with...and/or with his son and/or wife who also seem like delightful people for putting up with Allen's antics. I might have glossed over SPOILER ALERT: the pranks Ceaser played on him at the boarder school. I'm sorry but they seemed to amount to me as "nothing more" than fraternity hazing (which I personally find repulsive) but in boarding school obviously it takes on a different dimension but for gods sake after 40 years you would think Allen would have "gotten over it"? But it is a fascinating story...I loved it...and what Ceasar fell into afterwards...OMG...I'd love to know this bully's reaction to the book.
A few years back I ventured into Facebook...I too had my grade school bully...but sort of took care of him (but that is another tale)but I did "meet up" with a few good people I long lost touch with including someone who strangely said they had "a bone to pick with me " from years ago and while ( at least to the best of my knowledge) am no felon I can't for the life of me know what I might have done.
Please read this book and let me know what you think.
March 22, 2015
I found this book really compelling. The concept really intrigued me -- a writer seeks out to find and confront his childhood bully. But there were a lot of things about this true story that really bothered me.
Don't get me wrong -- no child should bully any other child. But it happens. To almost everyone. The author spent less than a year at the age of 10 in Swiss boarding school, where he remembers being bullied and beat up by one particular student. Yes, that's terrible. But so terrible that it warranted a full-length book to work out? Frankly, I thought dropping a 10-year-old kid off at a Swiss boarding school did more harm than the bullying he suffered while there.
During the course of trying to track his bully down, the author finds out that his bully was involved in a bizarre loan scam involving fake royals, non-existent kingdoms, and convoluted borrowing practices. That in and of itself is very interesting, but I got the feeling that there wasn't really a book until this came to light. Cynical as it sounds, I got the feeling that this never would have been a book unless the financial scam side story, which takes up most of the space, didn't exist. These are really two different stories. And frankly, the bullying one isn't the interesting one. And ultimately, once found and confronted, the bully isn't very interesting either, although much space is given over to worrying about the author's safety.
To top it all off, I felt like neither the author nor the story achieved closure. Two good ideas here, but in this case, I think the afterthought made for a better story than the original.
Don't get me wrong -- no child should bully any other child. But it happens. To almost everyone. The author spent less than a year at the age of 10 in Swiss boarding school, where he remembers being bullied and beat up by one particular student. Yes, that's terrible. But so terrible that it warranted a full-length book to work out? Frankly, I thought dropping a 10-year-old kid off at a Swiss boarding school did more harm than the bullying he suffered while there.
During the course of trying to track his bully down, the author finds out that his bully was involved in a bizarre loan scam involving fake royals, non-existent kingdoms, and convoluted borrowing practices. That in and of itself is very interesting, but I got the feeling that there wasn't really a book until this came to light. Cynical as it sounds, I got the feeling that this never would have been a book unless the financial scam side story, which takes up most of the space, didn't exist. These are really two different stories. And frankly, the bullying one isn't the interesting one. And ultimately, once found and confronted, the bully isn't very interesting either, although much space is given over to worrying about the author's safety.
To top it all off, I felt like neither the author nor the story achieved closure. Two good ideas here, but in this case, I think the afterthought made for a better story than the original.
October 14, 2019
Zero stars? Half a star? At the risk of Mr. Kurzweil spending 40 years searching for me, the author is a TWERP. This is totally the kid you'd invite to a party and he'd call the cops cause there's cocaine there. The book reads like someone telling an overlong anecdote over dinner, and the story has good bones but he's telling it soooo poorly, with just godawful impressions and you DO NOT believe he said anything clever in the moment because he's talking now and there's all the evidence you need and is he still talking? Shit, you're out of wine, can you mime your way through this or would he please come up for air so you can open another bottle? Oh, dude, sick burn on your former bully's shirt. What did he do that was so scarring? I don't remember. It was never really CLEAR because you did a lot of TELLING not SHOWING and thus no one here has any emotional connection to the narrative. Oh, sick burn on your former bully's facial hair dude. This anecdote is AGGRESSIVELY long and I feel like a more APPROPRIATE place to process your many FEELINGS is in therapy.
But it ended, as all bad dinner parties do.
But it ended, as all bad dinner parties do.
August 30, 2015
This book was good in the beginning, a bore in the middle and predictable at the end. I picked it up at the library where it was on the recommended shelf and piqued my interest in that it was sort of an odd premise. A kid who is obsessed with his childhood tormentor from when he was in a Swiss boarding school, searches and ultimately looks him up in adulthood. Good stuff at the beginning about the weird boarding school and Lord of the Flies-like way the boys treated each other -- I was genuinely interested and then that part ended too soon and it turned into a detailed account of sleuthing out the bully via a major crime syndicate that he was involved in. Pages and pages of detailed legal briefs, suits, trials, lawyers, all ending with the bully serving time in prison for white color crime; big whoop. Was ready to drop it as i skimmed the middle section, but i did want to see what happened so i saw it through until the end.
I don't have a huge recommendation for this one; easily forgettable.
I don't have a huge recommendation for this one; easily forgettable.
April 24, 2015
Whipping Boy chronicles Allen Kurzweil’s search for his twelve-year-old nemesis, a bully named Cesar Augustus. The obsessive inquiry, which spans some forty years, takes Kurzweil all over the world, from a Swiss boarding school (where he endures horrifying cruelty) to the slums of Manila, from the Park Avenue boardroom of the world’s largest law firm to a federal prison camp in Southern California.
I'm trying to not judge Kurzweil but it felt like he wasted so much precious time and resources that he could have been spending with his wife and child trying to find his childhood nemesis and seeking retribution for what he did but then again, I guess it speaks of the life changing and lasting effects of bullying in general.
I'm trying to not judge Kurzweil but it felt like he wasted so much precious time and resources that he could have been spending with his wife and child trying to find his childhood nemesis and seeking retribution for what he did but then again, I guess it speaks of the life changing and lasting effects of bullying in general.
March 31, 2015
Wow - I recommend. A little slow at first the story builds. Kurzweil presents his childhood experience of being the victim of a bully and the later search to understand the same bully and con man with painstaking detail. Read in his own voice he does a great job at showing a man (himself) trying to understand his tormentor - a cruel lying disassociated fantasy based con man and scam artist. Anyone who has tried to understand the why of abusers and longed for the big confrontation will be satisfied by Kurzweil's story. He proves that revenge is not only living and loving well it's also telling the truth and naming names.
February 10, 2018
This was a interesting story, making anyone who ever had a childhood nemesis wonder how did that bully turn out as an adult. This author tells his true story upfront and without changing names. It is a documentary with photos, documents, etc. showing the story of the adult life of a bully. It also has the reader wondering if a "showdown" will happen. I won't spoil the answer but since this is real life, at the end of the book a since of "satisfaction" happens. I would love to have this story told again by a professional in psychology to put clinical terms to some of the behaviors described in this book.
May 26, 2019
The author goes on a search for the boy who bullied him as a child. “We all have our own Cesar,” say multiple people who help him, and that’s true. There are certainly individuals from my childhood that I’d like to find. How much of this search was cathartic, how much was a desire for vengeance, and how much was an opportunity for healing? How would I enter into my own searches, and what would I hope for in an outcome? While the concept of this book was interesting, and the search stumbled onto a goldmine of con stories, the point of the quest remained murky and the meticulous detail of the search was too much.
July 7, 2020
I wanted to like this book but the beginning of the story had me frustrated and feeling little sympathy for the author. The end of the book was a little better but all characters were unlikeable, self absorbed and obsessed.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 25, 2015
I thought it was about bullying. The story really did not keep my interest. It was more of a dissertation.
June 7, 2015
Loved the idea, well put together. You ever wonder what happened to those Little Caesar's you went to school with?
March 29, 2019
This felt so bogged down in details I didn't care about but the ending slightly redeemed it.
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