From veteran Washington Post journalist and First Lady-watcher Radcliffe: a fulsome biography of Hillary Rodham Clinton that's long on quotes from F.O.H.'s and F.O.B.'s and short on any from those who might be a tad more objective. In less than sparkling prose, Radcliffe tells the story of a woman who's far too exceptional in her accomplishments to be trotted out for public consumption as just another working woman of the 90's trying to juggle family, career, and other commitments. Raised in a Chicago suburb, the future First Lady had parents who not only encouraged her to excel at academics and athletics but made no distinction between her and her two brothers. With this priceless advantage, she went on to achieve great things, not only in her education but in all the subsequent positions she's held. Radcliffe describes tales of how Hillary Rodham, a Goldwater supporter, changed during the turbulent late 60's at Wellesley to become a McGovern campaign-worker and a liberal Democrat. The author suggests, however, that Mrs. Clinton's liberalism is tempered by her Methodist up-bringing and religious readings: Her sense of human frailty has led her to reject ``sentimental liberalism'' and to adopt a more pragmatic response in working for justice and reform. ``I wonder if it's possible to be a mental conservative and a heart liberal?'' the First Lady once wrote. Her meeting with Bill Clinton at Yale; her decision to move to Arkansas (``My friends and family thought I had lost my mind. I was a little bit concerned about that as well''); her marriage; the campaign and the first hundred days of the presidency are also chronicled here. More a postcampaign bio than a probing assessment of a woman who doesn't need the White House to validate her. Still, a readable primer to fill in until the big book—and there must be one—comes along. (First printing of 75,000)
Pub Date: Sept. 20, 1993
ISBN: 0-446-51766-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1993
An engrossing, intense, and highly descriptive narrative chronicling the ghastly conditions three pregnant women suffered...
The incredible true story of three Jewish women who survived the Holocaust.
Priska, Rachel, and Anka were married Jewish women in their early 20s when the Nazis took control of Europe. Like millions of other Jews, they were forced to give up their normal lives, all of their belongings, and their homes. Shuttled into ghettos and then off to one of the most notorious camps, Auschwitz II-Birkenau, they suffered through the Nazis’ increasing atrocities. But these three women all held a secret: they were pregnant. They were moved from Auschwitz and ended up in Mauthausen, another notorious death camp. With facing the most horrible conditions imaginable, all three gave birth right before the Allies accepted Germany’s surrender. In this meticulously detailed account, Holden (Haatchi & Little B: The Inspiring True Story of One Boy and His Dog, 2014, etc.) compiles an enormous amount of information from interviews, letters, historical records, and personal visits to the sites where this story unfolded. The graphic history places readers in the moment and provides a sense of the enduring power of love that Priska, Rachel, and Anka had for their unborn children and for the husbands they so desperately hoped to see after the war. Even though it occurred more than 70 years ago, the story’s truth is so chillingly portrayed that it seems as if it could have happened recently. These three women and their infants survived in the face of death, and, Holden writes, “their babies went on to have babies of their own and create a second and then a third generation, all of whom continue to live their lives in defiance of Hitler’s plan to erase them from history and from memory.”
An engrossing, intense, and highly descriptive narrative chronicling the ghastly conditions three pregnant women suffered through at the hands of the Nazis.Pub Date: May 5, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-237025-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 28, 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
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