Roosevelt’s iconic hundred days followed another hundred days, far more obscure but equally critical, and Rauchway’s...
A Depression-era history of an exceedingly difficult transition from one president to another.
Franklin Roosevelt crushed Herbert Hoover on Nov. 8, 1932, and assumed the presidency on March 4, 1933. Though scholars have not ignored those four months, the period was a spectacularly eventful one that deserves closer attention. Rauchway (History/Univ. of California, Davis; The Money Makers: How Roosevelt and Keynes Ended the Depression, Defeated Fascism, and Secured a Prosperous Peace, 2015, etc.) does just that in this lively, opinionated, and definitely not revisionist history. Historians are re-evaluating Hoover’s reputation as a dour technocrat who failed to address the Depression. Rauchway portrays him as an energetic and workaholic man convinced that direct government relief would destroy our freedom. He described Roosevelt as an unprincipled politico who intended to inflict a radical “New Deal” on America. The author agrees, emphasizing that Hoover’s prediction that Roosevelt was planning reforms was correct, but he points out that subsequent historians have generated the “myth of Roosevelt as an ignorant but blithe spirit simply trying expedients until he found some that worked.” Rauchway documents the new president’s consulting experts and legislators for ideas. Even before inauguration, supporters introduced several New Deal bills to the lame-duck Congress. Except for the repeal of Prohibition, all were defeated. The author paints a grim picture of a nation awash with misery and on the verge of revolution—a feeling shared by members of Hoover’s administration if not Hoover himself. Many experts complain that Roosevelt stubbornly refused to cooperate during the interregnum, but “cooperation,” according to Rauchway’s Hoover, meant foreswearing deficit spending, government regulations, relief, public works, and currency inflation (i.e. the New Deal), which, Hoover believed, would make matters worse.
Roosevelt’s iconic hundred days followed another hundred days, far more obscure but equally critical, and Rauchway’s insightful history brings it vividly to life.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-465-09458-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 10, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2018
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
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