Intermittently enjoyable but a lightweight, unfocused case study of an interfaith family.
Finding faith in the media fast lane.
Former Meet the Press moderator Gregory provides his life’s story, with an emphasis on his search for faith. Born to a Jewish father and a Catholic mother, the author’s youth was marked by his parents’ divorce and his mother’s alcoholism. He describes these years in depth before moving on to his early career in journalism, during which he met his future wife, Beth. After this introduction, Gregory moves on to the topic of his faith life, something he had thought little about until his marriage to a Christian. When the couple discussed how to raise their children, they decided to raise them as Jews, as this was culturally important to the author. His wife, however, had no plans to convert to Judaism. This interfaith parenting decision serves as a source of tension throughout the remainder of the book. Gregory moves on to detail his complex relationship with President George W. Bush. While he normally faced Bush in the role of journalist, the president was also prone to interact with the author in very personal ways, asking him on occasion, “How is your faith?” and discussing questions of religious belief. Gregory recounts his eventual departure from NBC: “My faith had strengthened me so that I knew I could take the hit, and thrive, even if I was not on television.” The author discusses interfaith marriage in America, including the view from an Islamic friend. Though Gregory has an interesting life story, and the book will appeal to TV news junkies, it is not without its flaws. The author distracts from his core message with excessive analysis and loose storytelling, and the writing is less than polished, more suitable to a magazine article or news copy than a full book.
Intermittently enjoyable but a lightweight, unfocused case study of an interfaith family.Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4516-5160-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
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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