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THE ROOSEVELT WOMEN

Name: THE ROOSEVELT WOMEN
Author: Betty Boyd Caroli
ISBN: 0-465-07133-3

by Betty Boyd Caroli ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 28, 1998

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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

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

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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)