A reasonably serious biography, by a reporter in Time magazine’s Washington bureau. Blackman, a seasoned journalist, focuses on the personal life of a public figure. Readers seeking analysis of Albright’s foreign policy, insights into how her mind works, or an agenda she might pursue through higher elective office will need to look elsewhere. Even political relations are characterized in terms of style rather than substance. Her interactions with the president, for example, are described as “almost flirtatious,” while any shared foreign policy goals beyond vague platitudes remain undiscussed. That said, this is a balanced, penetrating look at Albright as a person. Blackman acknowledges Albright’s considerable accomplishments without making her into a saint, exposing qualities that have helped her succeed but are not always positive. In Blackman’s hands, Albright appears driven and shrewd, talented and caring about others, and above all an expert networker at home in the image-conscious late 20th century. She has “great confidence” but also “abiding insecurities” requiring “constant reassurance” from friends, and is “more obsessed with her image than almost anyone on the public stage today.” Deeply shaken by her divorce, she turned to friends for comfort so excessively that they eventually told her “to shut up about Joe, to get on with her life.” This experience also suggests an Albright pattern of behavior: how could she have been married for 23 years and have no inkling that her spouse was about to leave, just as she apparently was ignorant of her Jewish heritage until a reporter uncovered it? The latter incident is thoroughly beaten to death by Blackman, who also devotes a full third of the book to the life of Albright’s father. This discussion of her family background is interesting on its own terms, but disproportionate if the goal is to understand the secretary of state. The first Albright biography worth reading, but not destined to be the definitive account of a political career. (Author tour; radio satellite tour)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-684-84564-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1998
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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