The author’s unrestrained advocacy can be annoying, but he provides a strong portrait of an undervalued general.
Revisionist biography of the Union general who overcame long odds to win the war in the West.
Bobrick (The Fated Sky: Astrology in History, 2005, etc.) makes his views clear from the outset, arguing that Grant and Sherman, both of whom outlived George Thomas (1816–70), promoted their own reputations at his expense. A Virginian by birth, Thomas excelled at West Point, where Sherman was his roommate. His career after graduation was typical of his generation of officers: the Seminole War, the Mexican War and a stint as instructor at West Point, where he befriended Lee. In 1855, he was appointed to the 2nd Cavalry, an elite regiment created by Secretary of War Jefferson Davis that included among its officers 16 future generals, 11 for the Confederacy. When the Civil War came, Thomas remained with the Union despite his Southern origin and connections. Sent to Kentucky to train recruits, he won a significant battle at Mill Springs in early 1862 and was a key figure in the Union victory at Stones River later that year. His real fame came toward the war’s end, when he was instrumental in the battles of Chattanooga, Chickamaugua, Atlanta and his greatest triumph, Nashville, where he essentially destroyed the Confederate army in the West. While giving a clear account of all these events, Bobrick piles up evidence that Grant, Sherman and even Lincoln not only failed to recognize Thomas’s brilliance, but consistently acted to prevent his rise. He also argues that Sherman and Grant were bunglers, the one a megalomaniac, the other an alcoholic butcher who battered his opponents into surrender at the cost of his own men’s lives. After the war, Thomas’s natural modesty kept him from aggrandizing or profiting from his reputation. He served honorably in Reconstruction duty and showed no political ambition, though some urged him to run against Grant for president. Bobrick attributes his death from a stroke to anger provoked by a letter denigrating his generalship, possibly written at Grant’s instigation.
The author’s unrestrained advocacy can be annoying, but he provides a strong portrait of an undervalued general.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-7432-9025-8
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2008
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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