It was ideas and ideals that drove the Roosevelt women, particularly those influenced by the genes of Georgia belle Mittie Bulloch, says the author in this curiously engrossing overview of the Roosevelt XX-factor. As she researched an earlier book, First Ladies (not reviewed), historian Caroli was intrigued by the question of who provided Eleanor Roosevelt with models. Her mentor at an English boarding school is often given the credit, but Eleanor spent only three years at Allenswood, a brief respite in a life racked by early tragedy (the death of brother, mother, and father) and later turmoil (within a five-year span, the birth of her sixth child, discovery of her husband’s well-established affair with Lucy Mercer, and Franklin’s attack of polio). Caroli believes it was the influence of her aunts, cousins, and even her maligned mother-in-law, Sara, that set Eleanor on the path to becoming “First Lady of the World.” A chapter each is devoted to the primary exemplars, beginning with the matriarch, Martha (Mittie) Bulloch, who married a Theodore Roosevelt and moved to New York City not long before the Civil War, knowing she would face prejudice and misunderstanding because her family owned slaves. She toughed it out, giving birth to four children, including the future president Theodore and Eleanor’s father, Elliott. Mittie’s daughters Anna, known for her warmth, wit, and political acumen, and Corinne, also politically astute and in later life a sought-after public speaker, each receive a chapter, as do Eleanor and cousins Corinne Alsop, Ethel Derby, and Alice Longworth, Teddy’s tart- tongued daughter. Sara (Franklin’s mother) and Edith (Teddy’s second wife), although Roosevelts only by marriage, share a chapter where the author tries to correct Sara’s image as dominating and manipulative, and Edith’s as the perfect wife and mother. Great fun for Roosevelt buffs; filling in some gaps for those still unable to reconcile how the awkward, uncertain Eleanor became an international icon. (photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1998
ISBN: 0-465-07133-3
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1998
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
© Copyright 2024 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.
bookshelf
