by Brooks D. Simpson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 21, 2000
The superb first installment in a planned two-volume biography of the greatest Northern general of the Civil War—and one of the most remarkable military figures of all time. Simpson (History/Arizona State Univ.; The Reconstruction Presidents, 1998) is an oft-published authority on the era of the Civil War and Reconstruction. Here he takes on the case of U.S. Grant, whose unlikely rise from West Point—trained failed businessman to the pinnacle of military power is one of the most extraordinary success stories in American history. Appropriately enough, roughly 80 per cent of the volume concerns Grant’s military career, from his service in the Mexican War through his triumph at Appomattox. But the distinctive value of Simpson’s work, especially compared to William McFeely’s prizewinning biography, is that he does not slight Grant’s personal life, especially his fraught relationships with his father and slaveholding father-in-law and his marriage to Julia Dent Grant. Moreover, Simpson is unfailingly balanced and judicious in his assessments of military decisions, battles, and politics. While he is clearly partial to his subject, he does not shy away from Grant’s tactical errors or the never-stilled rumors of his excessive drinking (for which Simpson finds insufficient evidence and many embellished stories). Why, given the existence of so many other studies about the man and his times, would anyone want to read this lengthy biography? Because it is skillfully written; because Grant’s life is more fully realized in it than in previous one-volume studies; and because Simpson, who has benefited from decades of Civil War study, wears his wide-ranging scholarship lightly. Guaranteed to enlighten and please anyone who hasn’t had enough of the Civil War and its central figures. (7 maps, not seen)
Pub Date: Feb. 21, 2000
ISBN: 0-395-65994-9
Page Count: 576
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1999
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by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
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
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by Elie Wiesel ; edited by Alan Rosen
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by Elie Wiesel ; illustrated by Mark Podwal
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by Elie Wiesel ; translated by Marion Wiesel
by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 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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