A thorough picking-over of Deng Xiaoping’s record and accomplishments, setting him firmly as the linchpin linking an antiquated authoritative thinking to modern growth and acceleration.
With Deng’s accession to preeminence in 1978, China was still very much in the throes of closed thinking and hostility to the imperialist West, reeling from internal wounds inflicted by Mao Zedong during the Cultural Revolution and choked by centralized control. In this well-considered and -researched study, Vogel, former director of Harvard’s Asia Center, portrays the whole remarkable character: from early student worker in France in the 1920s turned communist revolutionary, fired by imperialist humiliations and determined to help build a rich and strong China; to Mao’s capable tool in constructing a coalescent communist base and, by turns, Mao’s builder, finance minister and foreign and general secretary during the ’50s and ’60s. Indeed, Deng proved to be Mao’s indispensable “implementer,” to the extent of supporting Mao’s attack on outspoken intellectuals during the Hundred Flowers period and obediently carrying out Mao’s disastrous Great Leap Forward. Yet Deng’s reservations would render him purged and disgraced twice by Mao: during the early Cultural Revolution, then again in 1976, when Deng’s efforts at consolidation and reform (encouraging Western support, learning about modernization of industry and science and reviving higher education) were “placed in cold storage” because he was suspected of designs to seize power and restore capitalism. Under Mao’s successor Hua Guofeng, then as premier in his own right, Deng’s reforms in science, technology and education proved the impetus for the modernization that would propel China forward. His willingness to seek Western expertise and open to other countries, “emancipate minds,” encourage initiative and meritocracy and create special zones for attracting foreign investment have produced today’s economic juggernaut, yet his firm grip on the Communist party line also resulted in the tragedy of Tiananmen in 1989. Deng’s policy of staving off democratic reform by economic growth may last only so long. Vogel meticulously considers all facets of this complex leader for an elucidating—and quite hefty—study.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-674-05544-5
Page Count: 874
Publisher: Belknap/Harvard Univ.
Review Posted Online: July 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2011
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
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
SEEN & HEARD
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