One too many war stories, but fun for political junkies. (16 pp. photos, not seen)
After confessing that he has a “fetish for facts,” Senator Specter (R-Penn.) proceeds to dish up plenty of them in this hefty memoir.
As Specter tells it, the hallmark of his four decades in public service is a commitment to finding the truth regardless of the political consequences. In his view, “when people can agree on the facts and what is true, they can agree on what should be done in a just society.” While this sounds reasonable enough, the senator’s memoirs illustrate how elusive truth can be. Most of the issues he discusses in depth, ranging from the Supreme Court nominations of Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas to President Clinton’s impeachment, produced lots of facts but very little consensus on what was true. That reservation aside, Specter offers a great deal of information about his role in some of the more interesting investigations in recent history, beginning with the Kennedy assassination and ending with the impeachment. Inevitably, a memoir by a sitting politician will be somewhat self-serving. Certainly readers who disagree with Specter’s positions will tire of hearing about how ferreting out the truth and voting his conscience have allowed him to rise above the ranks of his venal colleagues. Also, the senator has a tendency to digress, sapping the story of its narrative momentum. In the middle of discussing Anita Hill, for instance, he lapses into an unrelated recollection about the 1988 presidential race. But most of us have learned to expect some wind when talking to a pol.
One too many war stories, but fun for political junkies. (16 pp. photos, not seen)Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-06-019849-4
Page Count: 576
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2000
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
A standout immigrant coming-of-age story.
In her first nonfiction book, novelist Grande (Dancing with Butterflies, 2009, etc.) delves into her family’s cycle of separation and reunification.
Raised in poverty so severe that spaghetti reminded her of the tapeworms endemic to children in her Mexican hometown, the author is her family’s only college graduate and writer, whose honors include an American Book Award and International Latino Book Award. Though she was too young to remember her father when he entered the United States illegally seeking money to improve life for his family, she idolized him from afar. However, she also blamed him for taking away her mother after he sent for her when the author was not yet 5 years old. Though she emulated her sister, she ultimately answered to herself, and both siblings constantly sought affirmation of their parents’ love, whether they were present or not. When one caused disappointment, the siblings focused their hopes on the other. These contradictions prove to be the narrator’s hallmarks, as she consistently displays a fierce willingness to ask tough questions, accept startling answers, and candidly render emotional and physical violence. Even as a girl, Grande understood the redemptive power of language to define—in the U.S., her name’s literal translation, “big queen,” led to ridicule from other children—and to complicate. In spelling class, when a teacher used the sentence “my mamá loves me” (mi mamá me ama), Grande decided to “rearrange the words so that they formed a question: ¿Me ama mi mamá? Does my mama love me?”
A standout immigrant coming-of-age story.Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4516-6177-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: June 11, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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