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WOODROW WILSON

A long, appreciative biography of Wilson that details the warm private man as well as the towering public figure; from former journalist and N.Y.C. Parks Commissioner Heckscher (St. Paul's: The Life of a New England School, 1980; coauthor, When LaGuardia Was Mayor, 1978). Making full use of the Wilson papers, the author offers a solid if standard account of the president's life: the years as a popular political-science professor, president of Princeton Univ., New Jersey governor, and, of course, Chief Executive, when he championed innovative labor, tariff, and fiscal reforms and steered the nation through WW I. As might be expected of an erstwhile president of the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, Heckscher sometimes defends his hero a little too much (e.g., he ascribes Wilson's dismal civil-rights record to the need to maintain a congressional consensus behind his legislation rather than to ingrained southern prejudices). Although he constantly emphasizes Wilson's passionate nature (including his devotion to his two wives and an apparent short-lived extramarital affair), other historians have already punched holes in the stereotype of the president as an arid intellectual. Instead, this biography is at its best in communicating the nature of Wilson's unusual charisma—a ``coming together of worldly good fortune with a feeling of inner blessedness'' in this son and grandson of Presbyterian ministers. In Heckscher's view, Wilson's fighting faith (he once said that, as President, ``a man must put on his war paint'') made him at his zenith an irresistibly persuasive and eloquent reformer—but, when his political instincts and health failed him (for instance, during the ill-starred fight to save the League of Nations), it led to disaster. A familiar, but convincing and sympathetic, argument for Wilson's greatness as presidential innovator and world statesman. (B&w photographs—not seen.)

Pub Date: Nov. 18, 1991

ISBN: 0-684-19312-4

Page Count: 752

Publisher: Scribner

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1991

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NIGHT

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. 

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.

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

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

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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