An epic, revealing biography that becomes, in its author's words, ``a study in the unapologetic use of a great fortune to secure influence.'' In this first of two projected volumes on the four-term New York governor, Reich (Financier: The Biography of Andre Meyer, 1983), former executive editor of Institutional Investor, depicts a prototypical restless prince. The traits Nelson Rockefeller displayed in bending the rules of his forbidding millionaire father became those he exhibited with powerful superiors in politics: boundless energy, guile, brazenness, and sycophancy. At 23, Nelson formed his own corporation to lure tenants to the new jewel in the family crown, Rockefeller Center. Before long, he became the prime mover among the five Rockefeller sons by outmaneuvering the management team that had built Rockefeller Center, becoming the president of the Museum of Modern Art, and forming business ventures in South America. Turning to Washington in the 1940s and '50s, in midlevel posts, he helped secure Pan-American unity by wrangling admission for Argentina into the UN, proposed Harry Truman's ``Four Point'' program for aid to developing countries, and suggested Dwight Eisenhower's ``Open Skies'' initiative at the 1955 summit. One Cabinet member after another came to splutter at Rocky's nonstop memos, end-runs to the president, and willingness to use his wealth to supplement aides' government salaries and form ad hoc committees that spawned independent initiatives. Rockefeller found an arena more suited for his outsize ambitions by beating Averell Harriman in a 1958 New York gubernatorial race that set a state record for spending. Reich does not neglect the darker aspects of Rockefeller's early career: arrogance, heedless pursuit of big, often profligate projects, and a Bob Packwoodstyle wandering eye for comely assistants. ``Rocky'' here seems less like political tyro growing into his role than one already formed and waiting to burst from his shell. But, using his impressive research (interviews with 350 people and access to the family archives), Reich captures all his magnetism, imperial style, and ruthlessness.
Pub Date: Nov. 2, 1996
ISBN: 0-385-24696-X
Page Count: 896
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1996
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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