An important biography of a trailblazing woman, the book illuminates its subject’s strength at pinpointing a path forward in...
The bestselling author delivers a new biography of Sandra Day O’Connor (b. 1930), the first woman appointed to the United States Supreme Court.
Thomas (Being Nixon: A Man Divided, 2015, etc.), the former longtime correspondent and editor at Time and Newsweek, shows a woman who “saw herself as a bridge between an era where women were protected and submissive to an era of true equality of the sexes.” However, writes the author, “she did not regard herself as a revolutionary. Her success was owed in no small part to her ability to marry ambition to restraint.” Though a bit slow at first, the narrative establishes an essential background to understanding O’Connor as a woman who effectively navigated the shifting political landscape facing many women of her generation. Through Thomas’ lens, readers discover O’Connor as a driven, confident woman who seldom pushed others to acknowledge the impact of gender on expectations or success. She was capable of ignoring sexism of her peers but was committed to public service, civility, and principles of equality. Mindful not to draw too many conclusions about O’Connor’s beliefs, which she kept guarded, Thomas shines a clear light on her savvy, incremental approach to social change. From her professional charm and humor to her stylish grace, the author presents a significant view of O’Connor that contextualizes her political sensibilities. Peppered with tidbits about her personal life, the overall well-rendered portrait bears out the contradictory truths of her liminal position between traditional and evolving roles for women. At times, Thomas’ conclusions border on restrained, but that befits his subject. The author is at his best addressing the cases that came before SCOTUS during O’Connor’s era. Thomas ably shows O’Connor’s pivotal role in reaching resolutions regarding such issues as abortion, affirmative action, and voting rights. The author also sheds light on O’Connor’s nuanced legal prowess and her sensitivity to the tumultuous rise of partisanship.
An important biography of a trailblazing woman, the book illuminates its subject’s strength at pinpointing a path forward in complex times.Pub Date: March 19, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-399-58928-7
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2019
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
A horde-pleaser, well-written and full of surprises.
“The Mongols swept across the globe as conquerors,” writes the appreciative pop anthropologist-historian Weatherford (The History of Money, 1997, etc.), “but also as civilization’s unrivaled cultural carriers.”
No business-secrets fluffery here, though Weatherford does credit Genghis Khan and company for seeking “not merely to conquer the world but to impose a global order based on free trade, a single international law, and a universal alphabet with which to write all the languages of the world.” Not that the world was necessarily appreciative: the Mongols were renowned for, well, intemperance in war and peace, even if Weatherford does go rather lightly on the atrocities-and-butchery front. Instead, he accentuates the positive changes the Mongols, led by a visionary Genghis Khan, brought to the vast territories they conquered, if ever so briefly: the use of carpets, noodles, tea, playing cards, lemons, carrots, fabrics, and even a few words, including the cheer hurray. (Oh, yes, and flame throwers, too.) Why, then, has history remembered Genghis and his comrades so ungenerously? Whereas Geoffrey Chaucer considered him “so excellent a lord in all things,” Genghis is a byword for all that is savage and terrible; the word “Mongol” figures, thanks to the pseudoscientific racism of the 19th century, as the root of “mongoloid,” a condition attributed to genetic throwbacks to seed sown by Mongol invaders during their decades of ravaging Europe. (Bad science, that, but Dr. Down’s son himself argued that imbeciles “derived from an earlier form of the Mongol stock and should be considered more ‘pre-human, rather than human.’ ”) Weatherford’s lively analysis restores the Mongols’ reputation, and it takes some wonderful learned detours—into, for instance, the history of the so-called Secret History of the Mongols, which the Nazis raced to translate in the hope that it would help them conquer Russia, as only the Mongols had succeeded in doing.
A horde-pleaser, well-written and full of surprises.Pub Date: March 2, 2004
ISBN: 0-609-61062-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2003
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