The first full-dress biography of Bunche—and one that brings to life the many achievements of a remarkable diplomat. Drawing on access to Bunche's private papers and to knowledge gained during his stint as Bunche's assistant at the UN, Urquhart (A Life in Peace and War, 1987; Hammarskjold, 1972) offers a nuanced portrait of an exceptional man who began as a militant critic of white America and ended as a member of its establishment. Bunche, the grandson of a former slave, graduated from UCLA in 1927, earned a doctorate at Harvard, and helped Gunnar Myrdal research his landmark study, An American Dilemma. During WW II, the future UN undersecretary general served with the OSS, moving in 1944 to the State Department, where—in his capacity as head of the section dealing with colonial affairs—he participated in the founding of the UN and the drafting of its charter. In the wake of his appointment to the UN Secretariat, Bunche negotiated the 1949 armistice between Israel and its Arab neighbors, a feat that won him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1950. As the secretary-general's chief troubleshooter, he directed missions to defuse the Suez, Congo, Cyprus, and other crises. Though a world-class statesmen widely esteemed for his mediation talents, the globe-trotting Bunche (who died in 1971 at age 67) remained a second-class citizen subject to racial discrimination in the US—where he was visibly, if judiciously, active in the civil-rights movement. Throughout, Urquhart provides perceptive accounts of Bunche's many appearances on the international stage, plus valuable perspectives on his relations with a close-knit family. As additional archival material becomes available, scholars will no doubt pay closer attention to Bunche's extraordinary accomplishments as a peacemaker. But be that as it may, Urquhart's scrupulously documented, wide-angle narrative bids fair to become a standard reference on the man. (Photographs—not seen)
Pub Date: Aug. 30, 1993
ISBN: 0-393-03527-1
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1993
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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