A perceptive, gritty portrayal of the frenzy of war and a father and son caught at its tumultuous center.
A gripping history of a family torn apart by political upheaval.
In this fresh contribution to the abundant biographies of Benjamin Franklin and histories of the American Revolution, poet, playwright, and biographer Epstein (The Ballad of Bob Dylan, 2011, etc.) focuses on the relationship between Franklin and his illegitimate son, William, who rose to become a political force in his own right. Epstein’s title refers both to William’s sorely tested loyalty to his father and unwavering loyalty to England as the Colonies erupted in rebellion and violence. Drawing on much unpublished correspondence as well as published works, the author constructs a fast-paced, vivid narrative with a host of characters whose appearance and personality he etches with deft concision. According to a close family friend, Franklin had been the loving, “intimate, and easy companion” of his son when William was a young man. Charming, “handsome, easy-going, more agreeable” than his father, William achieved success that eventually rankled Benjamin. Epstein notes “open, unabashed competition” by the time William was 40 and governor of New Jersey. However, it was not competition that caused their deep rift but rather their immersion in vastly different political worlds: William, in the Colonies, sought to “manage the volatile emotions” of rebellious protesters; Benjamin, in England, saw Parliament as “power-hungry, factious,” and corrupt and urged his countrymen “to stand firm, trusting in their own sense of justice,” even risking “a permanent break from the mother country.” Epstein is sympathetic to William’s desperate desire to quell dissent, actions that led to a year’s imprisonment in a squalid cell while his father basked in the warmth of celebrity in Paris, where he lived a luxurious life in a villa. What did Benjamin know, asks the author, about “that hell on earth,” the “war of desolation, the hangings and rapes and dismemberments,” the 10,000 refugees? Father and son eventually reconciled, but Franklin never really forgave William for what he considered betrayal.
A perceptive, gritty portrayal of the frenzy of war and a father and son caught at its tumultuous center.Pub Date: June 6, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-345-54421-6
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: March 18, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2017
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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