by Alonzo L. Hamby ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 22, 2015
Not exactly revelatory but an accessible biography that adds to the large body of existing FDR scholarship.
A straightforward, “flesh-and-blood” study of the president that underscores the depth and ambiguity behind the charming facade.
Hamby (Emeritus, History/Ohio Univ.; For the Survival of Democracy, 2007, etc.) recounts his early memories of hearing a Franklin Roosevelt fireside chat and the shocking announcement of his death on April 12, 1945. He fashions this study around the notion of how the life of a great personage shaped an entire era—namely, the way America wanted to see itself. FDR came from old money with a sense of “special social standing,” and he was imbued on both sides of his family with the ideals of “Calvinist piety, thrift and capitalist enterprise”—none of which he actually embraced. An only child adored by his parents, he was an early leader and a bit of a trickster who knew how to get around the proper rules. When his father died and his mother, Sara, devoted herself to him, he was able to maintain his independence and marry the woman he wanted, Eleanor; by his early 20s, he had “honed his skills of manipulation and deception to a scalpel’s edge.” This ability served him well in his increasingly public profile. Deeply influenced by the progressive ideals of his cousin Teddy Roosevelt and Eleanor’s strong commitment to public duty, FDR was becoming a leader who understood the needs of the people. Hamby moves thematically through the crucial next decades, focusing on FDR’s engagement of one challenge after the next: grim social realities that remained after the exalted victory in World War I; the polio that struck him down—though he transformed his affliction into a crusading philanthropy; and the desperate economic times that prompted him to harness the country to bold new ideas. Hamby also explores what he considers FDR’s crowning achievement: his “defense of democracy” during a horrendous global conflagration.
Not exactly revelatory but an accessible biography that adds to the large body of existing FDR scholarship.Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-465-02860-3
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2015
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by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 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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by Jon Krakauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1996
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
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