An uneven biography that should still find an audience with budding journalists and those interested in a significant period...
An account of the adventurous life of Alicia Patterson (1906-1963), founder and editor of Newsday.
Before screenwriter Alice Arlen died earlier this year, she teamed with her husband, former New Yorker staff writer and TV critic Michael Arlen (Say Goodbye to Sam, 1984, etc.), to document the life and premature passing of Patterson, Alice’s aunt. Descended from a wealthy, powerful Chicago newspaper family, Patterson could have lived as an idle heiress or a philanthropist or some other choice open only to the very rich. Until age 34, she seemed rather aimless, marrying twice unhappily to men chosen by her imperious father. Eventually, she became an accomplished horsewoman and learned about flying airplanes. Twice divorced, Patterson chose her third husband on her own. Harry Guggenheim had benefitted from a family fortune in the mining business and owned estates on Long Island. Although he attempted to control Alicia, she resisted, and together they purchased a tiny Long Island newspaper. She won editorial if not financial control and slowly built Newsday into a successful general circulation daily. Feeling ignored by her husband and clashing with him about politics (she was more liberal than her generally conservative husband), Patterson developed a deep friendship with Adlai Stevenson, who became the governor of Illinois and then sought the presidency as the Democratic Party candidate in 1952 and 1956. Stevenson fell deeply in love with Patterson, and she loved Stevenson as well, albeit with less ardor. Their off-again, on-again affair defined a large portion of their later lives. Unable to bear children, Patterson's health began to deteriorate during her two final decades. She hoped to outlive Guggenheim and take total control of Newsday, but she died before he did. The authors display impressive research, but the narrative is marred by an unpleasant writing style, at turns cloying, rhetorical, and packed with too many unnecessary compound-complex sentences.
An uneven biography that should still find an audience with budding journalists and those interested in a significant period in the history of print journalism.Pub Date: Aug. 23, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-87113-3
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2016
A superb memoir by any standard, but one of the best to have been written by a rock star.
The Boss speaks—and he does so as both journeyman rocker and philosopher king.
Wrapping up his long backward look at a storied life and the anthemic songs that punctuate it, Springsteen examines his motivations. “I wanted to understand,” he writes of the past, “in order to free myself of its most damaging influences, its malevolent forces, to celebrate and honor its beauty, its power, and to be able to tell it well to my friends, my family and to you.” Readers who stick with the story—and there are a few longueurs—will be richly rewarded. Springsteen has lived well, even if he expresses a couple of regrets and, in a newsmaking episode, confesses to having suffered a long bout of depression at the age of 60. “The blues don’t jump right on you,” he writes, but jump they do. Nothing a pill can’t take care of, mind you, and when Springsteen rebounds, he does so with a joyous vengeance. Ardent students of his music might wish for a touch more depth in his account of his processes as songwriter and performer, but there’s plenty of that. In one of the scattered formulas that he tosses out, he allows that the math of rock ’n’ roll is an equation, thanks to the transport and bond between band and fan, through which “when the world is at its best, when we are at our best, when life feels fullest, one and one equals three.” That math may not bear close inspection, but Springsteen is foremost a fan, and nowhere more so than when he had a chance to play with rock gods Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, a fine and rousing moment in a book full of them. Springsteen is gentle with those who treated him poorly—and one imagines those “rah-rahs” of the Jersey Shore writhing in shame each day at the memory—but generous with love for friends and listeners alike.
A superb memoir by any standard, but one of the best to have been written by a rock star.Pub Date: Sept. 27, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5011-4151-5
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
At nearly 1,000 pages, Chernow delivers a deeply researched, everything-you-ever-wanted-to-know biography, but few readers...
A massive biography of the Civil War general and president, who “was the single most important figure behind Reconstruction.”
Most Americans know the traditional story of Ulysses S. Grant (1822-1885): a modest but brutal general who pummeled Robert E. Lee into submission and then became a bad president. Historians changed their minds a generation ago, and acclaimed historian Chernow (Washington: A Life, 2010, etc.), winner of both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, goes along in this doorstop of a biography, which is admiring, intensely detailed, and rarely dull. A middling West Point graduate, Grant performed well during the Mexican War but resigned his commission, enduring seven years of failure before getting lucky. At the outbreak of the Civil War, he was the only West Point graduate in the area, so local leaders gave him a command. Unlike other Union commanders, he was aggressive and unfazed by setbacks. His brilliant campaign at Vicksburg made him a national hero. Taking command of the Army of the Potomac, he forced Lee’s surrender, although it took a year. Easily elected in 1868, he was the only president who truly wanted Reconstruction to work. Despite achievements such as suppressing the Ku Klux Klan, he was fighting a losing battle. Historian Richard N. Current wrote, “by backing Radical Reconstruction as best he could, he made a greater effort to secure the constitutional rights of blacks than did any other President between Lincoln and Lyndon B. Johnson.” Recounting the dreary scandals that soiled his administration, Chernow emphasizes that Grant was disastrously lacking in cynicism. Loyal to friends and susceptible to shady characters, he was an easy mark, and he was fleeced regularly throughout his life. In this sympathetic biography, the author continues the revival of Grant’s reputation.
At nearly 1,000 pages, Chernow delivers a deeply researched, everything-you-ever-wanted-to-know biography, but few readers will regret the experience. For those seeking a shorter treatment, turn to Josiah Bunting’s Ulysses S. Grant (2004).Pub Date: Oct. 10, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-59420-487-6
Page Count: 928
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: July 11, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2017
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