Liberal social policy—once regnant, now at bay—is the subject of this loosely organized, often bitterly observant collection of essays and speeches by New York's senior US senator. Moynihan (Pandemonium, 1993; On the Law of Nations, 1990) has carved out a niche as the Paul Revere of the Senate, raising alarms at approaching menaces. In the wake of the Republican takeover of the House and Senate in the 1994 midyear elections, Moynihan, one of the few Democratic survivors of the electoral bloodbath, assessed how fellow Democrats (rarely himself—there's an overwhelming whiff of ``I told you so'' here) lost the old consensus for activist government. Moynihan is in a position to know: He worked as an assistant to presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon, and has served four terms as a Senator. We have, he argues, moved into a postindustrial age in which the economy operates smoothly but social ills proliferate. Our social legislation, largely based on 19th-century European models, is not designed to handle such challenges. We need, he asserts, to rethink the very basis of social legislation. His most heartfelt remarks concern the crisis of illegitimacy, which he first noted in the 1965 Moynihan Report, a paper that sparked such denunciation by various groups as to close off serious discussion for nearly two decades. Now, after left-liberal denials of social problems, we witness punitive welfare legislation (passed over Moynihan's impassioned objections) that verges on ``vengeance against children.'' Other pieces include a dissection of the Clinton administration's bungled attempt at health care reform, an impassioned call to route drug-war funds to programs that can reduce drug use, and an attack on the balanced- budget amendment as a bludgeon that can exacerbate an economic reverse. Hardly a coherent ``history,'' as the subtitle implies, but sobering reflections nonetheless on the cost of precipitous action taken without the benefit of social science research or humane reflection.
Pub Date: Oct. 15, 1996
ISBN: 0-674-57440-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Harvard Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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