A lively account, but lacking in analysis.
Crawford (Thunder on the Right, not reviewed) gives us a rollicking good tale of the downfall of an 18th-century maiden.
On September 16, 1774, Nancy Randolph was born into one of the most powerful families in colonial Virginia. She grew up with all the privileges of the gentry, and all the expectations, too. Considered a great beauty, she had been raised to snag the scion of another good Virginia family—but she sparked the most sordid sexual scandal of the Revolutionary era instead. At 18, she was accused of seducing Richard Randolph, her sister’s husband, and then coercing him into killing the baby she gave birth to nine months later. Richard and Nancy both declared their innocence, claiming that shiftless slaves had invented the story out of whole cloth. Richard admitted he had been most attentive to his pretty sister-in-law, but he denied sleeping with her. He spent a small fortune procuring the services of Patrick (“give me liberty or give me death”) Henry to represent him in court, and he was acquitted—but to no avail: Nancy’s name was mud. Men who had once fought to dance with her haughtily declared that they’d never lay a hand on her again. Now known as the Jezebel of Virginia, she moved north, settling in New York and marrying renowned New York politician Gouverneur Morris. Her son eventually built a church in her honor—St. Ann’s of Morisannia (the parish Jonathan Kozol recently wrote about in Ordinary Resurrections, p. 453). Crawford tells Nancy’s story in fast-paced, page-turning prose, but she fails to explain the lasting significance of this scandal. Is Nancy’s saga just a good yarn, a quaint, 18th-century version of Monicagate? Or is there more here than picturesque entertainment? It’s far from clear.
A lively account, but lacking in analysis.Pub Date: Nov. 9, 2000
ISBN: 0-684-83474-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2000
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
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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