by David Eisenhower with Julie Nixon Eisenhower ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 26, 2010
The author’s mixture of personal memories and research produces a fine addition to the history of both Eisenhower and the...
Dwight Eisenhower’s grandson, David (Communications/Univ. of Pennsylvania; Eisenhower at War, 1943-1945, 1991), and Richard Nixon’s daughter, Julie (Pat Nixon: The Untold Story, 1986, etc.), present an amiable and insightful memoir of the ex-president’s retirement years.
On leaving office, the former president and his wife moved to his Gettysburg, Pa., farm to live near his son and grandchildren, including the then 12 year-old author, David. The bruising 1960 presidential campaign left him bitterly resentful of President Kennedy and no fan of the press, especially when polls gave his presidency low marks (his rank has risen steadily since). The author adds that Eisenhower remained a national hero and the most influential Republican. Former Vice President Nixon was in temporary eclipse, having lost the presidency in 1960 and lost again in California’s 1962 governor’s race. Despite his influence and for reasons the author never makes clear, Eisenhower hung back from exerting it even in matters dear to his heart. Although he opposed conservative Barry Goldwater as Republican nominee in 1964, his refusal to endorse the candidates he preferred, Nelson Rockefeller and William Scranton, may have tipped the balance against them. The author intermixes politics with an affectionate account of Eisenhower’s domestic routine, which included a great deal of TV watching, golf, bridge, painting and socializing with wealthy friends, but also writing, intense devotion to running a working farm and delivering sage advice to young people, including the adolescent author. Few readers will be surprised at the former president’s lack of sympathy with ’60s morals, music and civil disorder, but the author stresses that he disliked discrimination against blacks and supported Kennedy’s and Johnson’s civil-rights legislation.
The author’s mixture of personal memories and research produces a fine addition to the history of both Eisenhower and the ’60s.Pub Date: Oct. 26, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4391-9090-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 18, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2010
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by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
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
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by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 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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