For those (and among them presumably the great number of undecided voters) who view both presidential candidates as "packaged products", "processed politicians", "machine twins", the Harvard historian and distinguished biographer (and of course liberal democrat) has written this short monograph- differentiating between the men, their politices and their parties. Schlesinger is most interesting about Nixon- certainly in isolating the ambiguity of the man (it is perhaps just this ambiguity which has made it difficult for his opponents to define or substantiate their dislike of Nixon) and in showing that he is the personification or product of Riesman's other- directed man; an image, rather than identity, without any political philosophy, any sense of history, any "steady deposit of conviction". (Thus he was able to be pro-McCarthy- and later anti-McCarthy.) Kennedy is viewed here as a man greatly concerned with issues and ideas, a liberal with a "coherent political philosophy", highly aware of the need for change and action (as against the Republican-Eisenhower-Nixon insistence that all is going along very nicely), and forecasting at a much earlier time what would- and did- happen in Cuba, Africa and Russia. In appraising party policies, this argues against status quo- or static-attitudes; against a single interest (business or any other single interest) party; and against the demonstrable failures of our foreign policy- so that for those who contend that Nixon could talk, or talk back, to Khrushchev in Russia- we have lost ground and caste the world over..... The subject, the author, and the time offer cumulative possibilities for a political profile which is sure to attract attention.
Pub Date: Oct. 3, 1960
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: May 22, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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