A treasure trove that enriches understanding of some of the men and women who helped shape events from World War II to the...
An insightful, unique view of the multiple Pulitzer-winning liberal icon Arthur Schlesinger Jr. (1917–2007).
Serving as their father’s editor, Schlesinger’s sons—former ABC News documentary writer Andrew (Veritas: Harvard College and the American Experience, 2005, etc.) and former Time contributor and World Policy Journal publisher Stephen (Act of Creation: The Founding of the United Nations, 2003, etc.)—mined more than 60 years of his correspondence and worked through the thousands of letters held at the New York Public Library and other collections. They also drew from his wide-ranging and varied correspondents to produce a worthy follow-up and companion to their Journals: 1952–2000 (2007). The letters selected here provide a clear picture of the multifaceted talents of their father. Schlesinger’s credentials provided standing for the advice he addressed to Democratic presidential candidates Walter Mondale in 1984 and Bill Clinton in 1992. He helped them run effective campaigns and noted that they should avoid the temptation to “out-Republican the Republicans.” The letters also include exchanges with close friends, like socialite and political supporter Marietta Tree and economist John Kenneth Galbraith, as well as complete strangers. Schlesinger and National Review founder William F. Buckley Jr. corresponded over many years, each welcoming the other’s latest publication efforts and disputing the historical significance of such figures as Joseph McCarthy. The editors also do a good job of representing Schlesinger's relations with the Kennedy family over the years, and there are sharply penned rebuttals of critics of the Kennedy brothers' Cuba policy—e.g., Christopher Hitchens and Joseph Califano—in which Schlesinger’s attention to detail predominates. Pen portraits of Eleanor Roosevelt, Jimmy Carter, Richard Nixon and Alger Hiss add to the mix, and the book also includes the author’s fears about the consequences of Ronald Reagan's term and the war in Iraq under the George W. Bush administration.
A treasure trove that enriches understanding of some of the men and women who helped shape events from World War II to the present.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9309-7
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Oct. 20, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2013
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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