An assemblage of admirably forthcoming first-person essays about the practice of American legislation.
A former Republican congressman recalls a lifetime of public service.
Debut author Stearns served as the U.S. representative for Florida’s 6th Congressional District for 24 years, his longevity alone a notable accomplishment. He wrote this memoir episodically over the course of eight years, while still in office, and it’s less a linear history than a series of reflective essays on his experiences and the inner machinations of American legislation, as well as the general nature of freedom, democracy, and religion. Much of the book serves as an instructive primer on American governance, an insider’s civic tutorial. Stearns not only explains the basic structure of the nation’s legislative branch—with emphasis on the function of the House—but also the mechanics of fund-raising and campaigning, the extraordinary significance of committee membership, and the often mercenary character of intraparty competition. The author unabashedly shares his opinion, even when it’s forcefully critical of a colleague; he excoriates Dennis Hastert’s reign as speaker of the House, especially for his misguided contributions to the economic catastrophe that visited the country at the conclusion of George W. Bush’s presidency. Stearns also denounces the Bush administration’s bailout of the banking industry, a strategy, the author contends, that undermines the Republican Party’s commitment to free market principles. (Stearns takes a hard stand against both socialism and Keynesian economics, which share the aggrandizement of government at the expense of individual liberty.) Some of the remembrances are directed analytically at special policy proposals (ObamaCare turns out to be incorrigibly bad) or major events in recent political history (President Bill Clinton’s impeachment and the Iraq War provide fodder for memorable discussions). But some of the best of Stearns’ ruminations are surprisingly erudite—he often cites intellectual luminaries like Aristotle, Kant, Seneca, and Herodotus, to name a few—and philosophical. He deeply ponders the nature of freedom and divine law, and the relation both have to the fallible dictates of majority rule. It’s not fully clear where Stearns finally lands in that theoretical thicket—he champions limited government, but also favors a robust place for religion in the public square. Even for those who count themselves the author’s ideological adversaries, this work delivers a thoughtful appraisal of American democracy and an edifying peek into the corridors of political power.
An assemblage of admirably forthcoming first-person essays about the practice of American legislation.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4602-8760-6
Page Count: -
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: Dec. 16, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-17563-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
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