Injudicious.
Harvard Law grad Thomas makes the case for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas (no relation).
Just in time for the tenth anniversary of the contentious confirmation hearings that rocketed an obscure lawyer to fame (and to the highest court), this biography begins well with the compelling story of Clarence Thomas’s rise from absolute poverty in rural Georgia. The trail from Liberty County to Yale Law School, via a Catholic seminary in Missouri and Holy Cross University, was full of twists and disappointments that make understandable Thomas’s gradual drift to the right and his disregard for the truisms propounded by the liberal establishment, especially on matters of race. Unfortunately, the second half of this account doesn’t come close to matching what precedes it. Thomas’s years at the EEOC and on the Court are related in mind-numbing detail and assessed in unconvincingly laudatory terms; every action is built up into a stunning achievement. And while the author tries to give the impression of restrained neutrality, his bias becomes increasingly pronounced around the time of the Anita Hill affair, for which his account relies to a large degree on the work of David Brock, who has recently done a very public about-face on the issue. Although a conservative viewpoint is unobjectionable, it comes entwined here with a vituperative misogyny that raises serious doubts about the rest of the analysis. This is unfortunate, as the author offers some important insights into Thomas’s development. His supposedly copycat conservatism is revealed as something far richer, emanating from a black man with firsthand knowledge of American liberalism’s failures, and the justice comes off here as stubborn, droll, rebellious—precisely the opposite of the qualities for which he is so often maligned. By needlessly attacking women, however, the author makes it likely that reaction will focus not on Thomas’s growth as a judge but once again on his relationship with Anita Hill.
Injudicious.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2001
ISBN: 1-893554-36-8
Page Count: 614
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2001
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
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
SEEN & HEARD
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