A distinguished addition to the recent run of outstanding antebellum histories and biographies.
A comprehensive biography of Lincoln’s political idol, the man said to have declared, “I had rather be right than be President.”
The breathtaking scope of Henry Clay’s career on the national stage surely accounts for the unique distinction accorded him at death (1777–1852). The first American to lie in state in the Capitol’s Rotunda, the Kentuckian transformed the House Speakership into a powerful office. As a diplomat, he helped negotiate the Treaty of Ghent, ending the War of 1812, later served as John Quincy Adams’s Secretary of State, and was part of the Great Triumvirate that included Daniel Webster and John C. Calhoun. A constantly defeated presidential candidate, Clay’s adherence to staid tradition and a middle course proved no match for irresistible national impulses arising in the Age of Jackson. David and Jeanne Heidler (History/Colorado State Univ.-Pueblo and History/United States Air Force Academy; Daily Lives of Civilians in Wartime Early America, 2007, etc.) cover these political high watermarks in illuminating detail, but the beauty and strength of this biography is the full-blooded portrait of the man that accounts for the devotion Clay inspired and the hatreds he aroused. “Prince Hal” to his admirers and “the Judas of the West” (for his alleged part in the “Corrupt Bargain” that gave Adams the presidency) to his detractors, Clay was a powerful orator and convivial raconteur. Notwithstanding frequent, debilitating illnesses, he traveled widely, maneuvered constantly, survived two duels, fathered 11 children and bred racehorses and innovative crops on his slave-operated estate. The authors carefully examine Clay’s tortured slavery straddle—he often publicly declared the institution’s immorality—placing his views in context, but forthrightly acknowledging the Great Compromiser’s poignant inability to resolve the internal inconsistencies of his own position, attributing the failure to “a fundamental flaw in an otherwise good and decent man.”
A distinguished addition to the recent run of outstanding antebellum histories and biographies.Pub Date: May 18, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4000-6726-8
Page Count: 624
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Laced with love, family dramas, recipes, and the pangs of growing up, Lerman’s memoir is a satisfying treat.
Nutrition expert and New York Times Well Blog contributor Lerman pens an intimate memoir about the intersections of intense family relationships and food, dieting, and healthy eating.
As a child, the author’s relationships with her overweight father and distant mother were difficult. Eventually, she realized that her father’s ravenous appetite—he often consumed 8,000 calories per day—was a disease he couldn’t control. Lerman’s mother, a frustrated actress, had no desire to be saddled with housewifely tasks. The author’s grandmother Beauty, however, showered her with love and attention and lots of home-cooked meals. “In her arms,” writes Lerman, “I was never hungry for food, love, or affection. She was my mentor and my savior—saving my life, spoonful by spoonful.” The author tracks her emotional and culinary life as the family moved from Chicago to New York as well as the transition in her relationship with her father when her younger sister’s burgeoning acting career took off. Lerman also chronicles her parents’ divorce, her teenage years, and her father’s bout with cancer. Always entranced by health-food stores, the author began developing a healthy eating regime for her father, who, always trying one extreme diet after another, was fighting for his health. He eliminated dairy, meat, alcohol, and caffeine, and he began making “anti-cancer soup with shiitake, portabella and maitake mushrooms.” He also stocked up on fresh vegetables, blue-green algae, and fermented foods. Throughout the book, Lerman links food to physical and emotional well-being—e.g., a meal of white fish and steamed leeks topped with lemon slices was “calming and almost euphoric.” During an encounter with a guest who offered Lerman a piece of macrobiotic apple pie while espousing a vegetarian lifestyle, the author’s mind opened up to new ways of living and eating, and she relates them smoothly to readers.
Laced with love, family dramas, recipes, and the pangs of growing up, Lerman’s memoir is a satisfying treat.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-425-27223-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: June 22, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2015
A solid and worthwhile biography. (24 b&w photos)
A well-researched biography of the famed children’s author, by Financial Times critic Wullschlager (Inventing Wonderland, 1995).
Born to a poor washerwoman and a young shoemaker in tiny Odense, Denmark, in 1805, Andersen was an effeminate, unattractive boy who left home at 14 to seek fame on the stage in Copenhagen. Unsuccessful as an actor, he managed to find a wealthy patron who provided for his education and helped launch his writing career. He made little mark as an author until 1835, when he turned to the fairy tales that would ultimately bring him fame. Drawing heavily on Andersen’s diaries and correspondence, Wullschlager paints a revealing portrait: an over-sensitive and essentially child-like man who was conflicted about his ambiguous sexuality and haunted by his humble origins. Especially interesting is Andersen’s complicated relationship with his primary audience; he wrote for adults and was annoyed that the public looked upon him as a children’s author. Andersen traveled widely, and the accounts of his visits are a source of some humor (and a fair amount of insight): he was once introduced to fellow children’s author Jakob Grimm (who had never heard of him), and was received as a London houseguest by Charles Dickens (who subsequently pinned up the note, “Hans Andersen slept in this room for five weeks—which seemed to the family AGES!”). A popular but lonely man, Andersen left his entire estate to a lifelong unrequited love, and among the hundreds who attended his funeral there was apparently not a single blood relative.
A solid and worthwhile biography. (24 b&w photos)Pub Date: May 3, 2001
ISBN: 0-679-45508-6
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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