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COUNSEL TO THE PRESIDENT

Name: COUNSEL TO THE PRESIDENT
Author: Clark Clifford
ISBN: 0-394-56995-4

A MEMOIR

by Clark Clifford with Richard Holbrooke ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 31, 1991

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Washington's most eminent lawyer, adviser, and confidant of Presidents offers a brilliant, entertaining, and generous (736- page) memoir of life at the pinnacle of power. Clifford began life as an attorney in Missouri, becoming during WW II the naval aide to President Truman. Quickly, he assumed a dominant role in the Truman White House and became Truman's principal adviser on domestic and foreign policy. Here, his admiration for Truman is obvious, and his many anecdotes about his plain-spoken chief are delightful. Moreover, Clifford became primary architect of many of Truman's most splendid accomplishmentshis triumphs over the steel and coal unions, the National Security Act, the desegregation of the Armed Forces, and Truman's magnificent 1948 electoral victory of Dewey. Soon after that victory, Clifford retired to become a private lawyer in Washington. He remained influential with many prominent people in government, however, and his narrative of Washington in the Fifties is fascinating. A self-proclaimed ``liberal activist,'' he later had a powerful impact on the policies of the Kennedy Administration. Similarly, he became personally involved with the formation of policy in the Johnson Administration. Despite early opposition to the Vietnam War, Clifford publicly supported the President's policies, eventually becoming LBJ's secretary of defense. His excruciating narrative of the Vietnam tragedy fills the reader with regret that LBJ did not follow Clifford's wise counsel. Finally, Clifford briefly reviews the achievements and shortcomings of Presidents in the post-Johnson era. His analysis of Richard Nixon's downfall and of the very dissimilar imperfections of Jimmy Carter's leadership are particularly illuminating. A splendidly writtenwith the help of Holbrooke, a managing director at Lehman Brothershighly engrossing narrative of postwar Washington, told by one of the last of America's Wise Men. (Sixteen pages of b&w photosnot seen.) (Book-of-the-Month Club Dual Selection for August)

Pub Date: May 31, 1991

ISBN: 0-394-56995-4

Page Count: 736

Publisher: Random House

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1991

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)