A remarkably well-researched and definitive account of an unheralded American hero.
A historian explores the life of a forgotten 20th-century hero in this biography.
In the plethora of works on the 1970s and the Watergate scandal, Frank Wills is often only mentioned in passing (and even then, rarely named) or relegated to obscurity in footnotes. Yet, as the 24-year-old security guard who first discovered evidence of a break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate Office Building in Washington, D.C., Wills played a singular role in the unraveling of America’s biggest political scandal. In this absorbing biography, Henig offers the first serious and systematic examination of Watergate through the lens of Wills. Despite the historical marginalization of Wills, the African American security guard became a national sensation as Richard Nixon’s presidency crumbled in the aftermath of the Watergate break-in. From making the cover of Jet magazine to appearing in nationally televised interviews, Wills had a brief flirtation with fame. But his celebrity quickly turned into a subsequent lifetime of tragedy where he “lived in the shadow of Watergate” and never missed an “opportunity to express his bitterness and disappointment” with his involvement in the scandal. Essentially blackballed from Washington security jobs by employers who resented him for not keeping quiet or who feared the loss of federal funding by retaliatory Republicans if they hired him—and undermined by the actions of his lawyer/agent in the heyday of his fame—Wills spent the latter decades of his life in poverty. After contracting AIDS, he suffered an early death from lymphoma and a brain tumor. Marshaling an impressive body of research that utilizes private interviews with Wills conducted by author Alex Haley, conversations with the security guard’s family and friends, and a myriad of archival and print sources, this book convincingly portrays the Watergate figure as a 20th-century hero. In addition, the work avoids the trappings of hagiography in its acknowledgments of Wills’ personal shortcomings. And while some of the tangential passages of historical context are at times more distracting than illuminating to Wills’ story, this is a powerful, tragic biography of a man who, in the words of Bob Woodward, was “the only one in Watergate who did his job perfectly.”
A remarkably well-researched and definitive account of an unheralded American hero.Pub Date: May 26, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-4766-8480-2
Page Count: 213
Publisher: McFarland
Review Posted Online: Sept. 4, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
A rousing, suspenseful adventure tale.
A harrowing expedition to Antarctica, recounted by Departures senior features editor Sancton, who has reported from every continent on the planet.
On Aug. 16, 1897, the steam whaler Belgica set off from Belgium with young Adrien de Gerlache as commandant. Thus begins Sancton’s riveting history of exploration, ingenuity, and survival. The commandant’s inexperienced, often unruly crew, half non-Belgian, included scientists, a rookie engineer, and first mate Roald Amundsen, who would later become a celebrated polar explorer. After loading a half ton of explosive tonite, the ship set sail with 23 crew members and two cats. In Rio de Janeiro, they were joined by Dr. Frederick Cook, a young, shameless huckster who had accompanied Robert Peary as a surgeon and ethnologist on an expedition to northern Greenland. In Punta Arenas, four seamen were removed for insubordination, and rats snuck onboard. In Tierra del Fuego, the ship ran aground for a while. Sancton evokes a calm anxiety as he chronicles the ship’s journey south. On Jan. 19, 1898, near the South Shetland Islands, the crew spotted the first icebergs. Rough waves swept someone overboard. Days later, they saw Antarctica in the distance. Glory was “finally within reach.” The author describes the discovery and naming of new lands and the work of the scientists gathering specimens. The ship continued through a perilous, ice-littered sea, as the commandant was anxious to reach a record-setting latitude. On March 6, the Belgica became icebound. The crew did everything they could to prepare for a dark, below-freezing winter, but they were wracked with despair, suffering headaches, insomnia, dizziness, and later, madness—all vividly capture by Sancton. The sun returned on July 22, and by March 1899, they were able to escape the ice. With a cast of intriguing characters and drama galore, this history reads like fiction and will thrill fans of Endurance and In the Kingdom of Ice.
A rousing, suspenseful adventure tale.Pub Date: May 4, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-984824-33-2
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Jan. 29, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlanticsenior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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