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LIFE OF THE PARTY

THE BIOGRAPHY OF PAMELA DIGBY CHURCHILL HAYWARD HARRIMAN

If the current US ambassador to France, Pamela Harriman, had spent as much time on her back as this book suggests, she would never have had the time to do the world-class housekeeping and flower arrangements that allegedly endeared her to her lovers—let alone become an authority on antiques, bring together historic personalities for global policy discussions, or raise millions of dollars for the Democratic party. Time correspondent Ogden (Maggie, 1990, a biography of Margaret Thatcher) was tapped to do the authorized Pam bio but was dumped, he says, when Ambassador Harriman got cold feet. Ogden had already keyed off ``some forty hours of interviews'' with the subject, for which he was not remunerated according to their original agreement. That may or may not have influenced his perspective when he decided to write the story anyway: He seems to view Harriman as a world-class courtesan. Chapters are for the most part named for the men in her life: Randolph (Churchill—first husband); Averell (Harriman—WW II lover and, decades later, third husband); Bill (Paley, CBS head); Ed (Murrow); JFK (misleading—she was friends with his sister); Gianni (Agnelli, Fiat head); Elie (de Rothschild); Leland (Hayward—second husband); Frank (Sinatra- -houseguest, no affair). For the first 16 (of 19) chapters, the author sniffs disapprovingly at her romantic life (more because she apparently let her lovers support her than because she was promiscuous), although he does admit that father-in-law Winston Churchill and his wife loved and protected her (even after her marriage to Randolph ended) as did most of her ex-lovers. Short on formal education but long on listening skills, Harriman trained that talent on a life lived by her own rules. This is fun to read as the names drop, but it offers more titillation than insight into a woman who rode out from a proper Dorset upbringing to adventure, wealth, power—and acknowledged achievement.

Pub Date: May 16, 1994

ISBN: 0-316-63376-3

Page Count: 512

Publisher: Little, Brown

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1994

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NIGHT

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. 

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.

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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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

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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