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THE ROCKEFELLER WOMEN

DYNASTY OF PIETY, PRIVACY, AND SERVICE

In this biographical stew, keeping the Abbys, Elsies, and Isabels straight demands a detailed menu and a hearty appetite for information about this American dynasty. Whatever their other faults and virtues, the Rockefeller women were nothing if not fecund, and in Stasz's (The Vanderbilt Women, 1991) narrative the players' identities begin to blur by the third generation (John D. Sr.'s children). Standing out from the crowd is the founding mother, Eliza Davison (b. 1813), whose wandering (and ultimately bigamous) husband was home at least long enough to father six children; of them, John Sr., and William went on to found Standard Oil and the Rockefeller family of legend. John's wife, Laura Spelman, from a family whose Ohio homes were noted stops on the Underground Railway, created a home dedicated to piety and service. The family has its share of rebels, eccentrics, and prima donnas. John D. Jr. married Abby Aldrich, whose five sonsJohn D. 3rd, Nelson, Laurance, Winthrop, and Davidbecame political and economic powerhouses as well as the subjects of diverting scandal. The book's pace becomes nearly breathless with reports of this and the next generation's marriages, divorces, offspring, and charities. Stasz tries to make a case for the Rockefeller women as the power behind the family's philanthropy, but she doesn't quite succeed. Although their influence resulted in the family fortune being funneled into some of this country's most valued institutionsSpelman College, New York City's Museum of Modern Art and Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the YWCA, among othersthe family money always remained under the firm control of the Rockefeller men. The women seemed to be best at their assigned roles: wives, mothers, and society's moral guardians. Cluttered with forgettable characters and focusing on John D. Sr. as much as his womenfolk, this is nevertheless a reminder of how the Rockefeller fortune has shaped the cultural institutions of this country. (16 pages b&w photos, not seen)

Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1995

ISBN: 0-312-13156-9

Page Count: 400

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1995

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NIGHT

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. 

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.

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

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

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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