An intimate, deeply engaging method of following historic events.
Historical ramble through the Revolutionary era via middle sister and intermediary Abigail Adams (1744–1818), who married best.
The three Smith sisters of Weymouth, Mass., were inseparable growing up under their minister father and thrifty, charitable mother, and they were remarkably well-educated, as demonstrated by the copious, frequent letters they exchanged throughout their long lives. Liberally excerpted by Jacobs (Her Own Woman: The Life of Mary Wollstonecraft, 2001, etc.), the letters allow readers to plunge into the voices and milieus of these lively characters, who nonetheless were relegated to the sidelines, observing the great events of the new nation unfold while their husbands got to strut about the stage—underscoring how important it was to marry well. Mary, the oldest sister, caught the interest of the girls’ tutor, Richard Cranch, due to her “intelligence—not to mention her beauty and goodness,” and “their passion quickened as he took it upon himself to initiate all three young women into the pleasures of Enlightenment philosophy, epistolary novels, Milton, Pope, Shakespeare, and also some French.” However, Cranch did not pan out well as a scholarly fabricator and farmer, relegating Mary to a life of much scrimping, drudgery and childbearing. Youngest sister Elizabeth, of “keen sensibility and high spirits,” was fairly beaten down by her marriage to drunkard Calvinist John Shaw. Abigail, in contrast, married the imperious fireball John Adams, not exactly handsome but brilliant and ironically humorous and with wit to match Abigail’s own; her feminist writing, both to husband and sisters, crackles off the page. Readers will cheer when she is finally goaded out of her enforced provincialism by the need to join her husband in his diplomatic mission to Paris in 1784.
An intimate, deeply engaging method of following historic events.Pub Date: March 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-345-46506-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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