Readable, authoritative and, most usefully, inspiring.
Accomplished biographer Berg (Lindbergh, 1998, etc.) emphasizes the extraordinary talents of this unlikely president in an impressive, nearly hagiographic account.
Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924), writes the author, was a much more complex figure than he appeared to be; he was a man of astounding depths, conflicting desires and erudition, driven to make history by his passionate ideals. Titling his chapters rather grandiloquently with biblical catchwords usually associated with Christ’s journey (from “Advent” to “Pieta”), Berg brings out an enormously sympathetic side to the Princeton-educated lecturer who was first and foremost a brilliant writer. Wilson took his first postgraduate job teaching women at Bryn Mawr; he was an uxorious husband (twice) and devoted father to three daughters. Indeed, he was wildly in love with his soon-to-be second wife, Edith, just as the first great crisis of his presidency erupted over whether or not to go to war with Germany after the sinking of the Lusitania on May 7, 1915. A man of principles who ruled with rhetoric, Wilson took the controversial step of attending in person the Versailles Peace Conference, absenting himself from the United States (and the domestic political fray) for a now-unimaginable six months. A stable Europe could only be built on “a peace of justice,” he insisted; the pride of his life was the establishment of the League of Nations and implementation of his Fourteen Points, while his heartbreak remained the refusal of Congress to enact either. Berg passes more lightly over the Virginia-born Wilson's less-than-admirable position on African-American civil rights. The author devotes a good portion of the book to the years following Wilson’s 1919 stroke, the severity of which the public did not fathom; it was a well-kept secret that Edith largely ran the White House in the final 18 months of his presidency. Berg portrays Wilson as an utterly new kind of chief executive, in a mold that has yet to be refilled.
Readable, authoritative and, most usefully, inspiring.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-399-15921-3
Page Count: 800
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: June 7, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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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