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THE INEVITABILITY OF TRAGEDY

Name: THE INEVITABILITY OF TRAGEDY
Author: Barry Gewen
ISBN: 978-1-324-00405-9

HENRY KISSINGER AND HIS WORLD

by Barry Gewen ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 28, 2020

Gewen has used the distance from events to refine his research into an elegant, elucidating study of comparative statecraft.

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Masterly work on the making of Henry Kissinger—and what American foreign policy can learn from his dark experience and pessimistic outlook.

In this deeply thoughtful, meticulously researched work, longtime New York Times Book Review editor Gewen looks at both Kissinger's life experiences—e.g., his teen years as a Jew in Bavaria living under Nazi persecution—and his assimilation of the academic work of fellow German Jewish intellectuals Leo Strauss, Hannah Arendt, and Hans Morgenthau as he steered American statecraft in the 1970s. While Kissinger is considered by some as criminal, even evil, for his advocating for the overthrow of Salvador Allende, the democratically elected leader of Chile, and other dispassionate realpolitik decisions as secretary of state under Richard Nixon, Gewen takes a more philosophical approach to his subject, delving into the reasons behind Kissinger’s coolheaded "assessment of power" and refusal to be swayed by "high moral principles like self-determination or national sovereignty.” Because he was hounded by the Nazis during his youth, Kissinger recognized the "realities of power" and, through his own father’s “powerlessness,” began to believe that “weakness…was synonymous with death” (as he wrote near the end of World War II). Kissinger was deeply influenced by the work of Strauss and Arendt, who "opposed tyranny but nursed a deep suspicion of democracy and majoritarian processes,” and became a colleague to Morgenthau, who eschewed traditional moralistic certainties for an approach based more on “incrementalism and perfectionism,” “stability rather than justice,” and “the less bad rather than the unqualified good.” In this well-measured, beautifully written book, Gewen thoroughly considers each facet of Kissinger's evolution and how his choice of "less bad" became his modus operandi—e.g., the "Christmas bombing" of North Vietnam at the end of 1972, forcing Hanoi to the negotiating table—ultimately tarnishing his elusive, urbane legacy.

Gewen has used the distance from events to refine his research into an elegant, elucidating study of comparative statecraft.

Pub Date: April 28, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-324-00405-9

Page Count: 448

Publisher: Norton

Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2020

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020

Categories:

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

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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

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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INTO THE WILD

by Jon Krakauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1996

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...

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The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).

Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor will it to readers of Krakauer's narrative. (4 maps) (First printing of 35,000; author tour)