Much more entertaining than most political memoirs, Frank’s story isn’t just revealing; it may be the most fun you can have...
Now that the fiery, occasionally dyspeptic congressman has left office, he lets the air out in a memoir that feels like it’s just the thing the long-serving politician has wanted to publish.
Frank tracks the nuances of two intriguing movements during his more than four decades in public life. When he was a novice politician in the late 1960s, the author had to hide his homosexuality, although nowadays—in a trend that owes some of its success to Frank’s becoming the first member of Congress to come out of the closet in 1987—same-sex marriage is increasingly prevalent. But while some personal freedoms are more possible now than when Frank entered politics, the concept that government can actually help citizens is decidedly on the wane. Nonetheless, the author has never stopped fighting the battle to pillory the idea that big government is inherently problematic. He writes movingly about issues of public housing and fairness that he has espoused throughout his career, but he also proves to be a barbed, exacting, witty thinker. On the topic of the “competent, uncharismatic” George Bush’s now infamous “read my lips: no new taxes” mishap, Frank writes, “[s]emantically, the phrase bothered me because it is illogical—you tell people to read your lips when they cannot hear you, and this does not apply when you are speaking to them through a microphone.” In addition to his personal story, parts of the book read like a manual for young politicians: “I think it is both legitimate and politically helpful to make my ideological opponents look not just wrong but also foolish, especially if I can use humor to do it.”
Much more entertaining than most political memoirs, Frank’s story isn’t just revealing; it may be the most fun you can have reading about the United States Congress.Pub Date: March 17, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-374-28030-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2015
PROFILES
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
