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THE WORLD REMADE

Name: THE WORLD REMADE
Author: G.J. Meyer
ISBN: 978-0-553-39332-3

AMERICA IN WORLD WAR I

by G.J. Meyer ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 7, 2017

A refreshing look at this still-much-debated world debacle.

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A sturdy one-volume study of America’s role in World War I.

As a companion to historian Meyer’s A World Undone: The Story of the Great War, 1914-1918 (2006), which focused on Europe, this work focuses exclusively on America’s involvement in World War I, from its embrace of neutrality to “the law of selfishness” in plunging the U.S. into Europe’s conflagration in 1917. The author debunks many myths about America’s valiant intentions in joining the war, especially regarding President Woodrow Wilson’s sense of destiny on the world stage, and he closely examines why Wilson acquiesced to joining the fight. Indeed, Meyer devotes an entire chapter to “Why,” including the political pressure from the outrage of the Zimmermann Telegram and the sinking of the Lusitania by German torpedoes. Yet, wonders the author, was Britain “so deeply in debt to the United States that its defeat would have plunged the nation into depression”? Or was it true that if the U.S. did not join the effort, Wilson, “as president, would be left with no major part to play in the postwar settlement”? Meyer gives a good sense of America’s future at that negotiating table and Wilson’s celebrated role at Versailles as the leader of the free world. The author also looks at America’s path in arriving at that fraught moment—manipulated by the propaganda effort of the British communications campaign, vilifying the Germans, and the struggle to raise conscription and maintain morale at home. In alternate chapters, Meyer chronicles narrative back stories, such as the role of Col. Edward House in influencing the president and that of “Fighting Bob” La Follette, the congressman from Wisconsin who passionately argued that America had no quarrel with the German people and that Wilson needed to be held accountable. Meyer also examines the unprecedented restrictions on censorship called for by the Wilson administration, and, as an appendix, he includes Wilson’s “Program for Peace” in its entirety.

A refreshing look at this still-much-debated world debacle.

Pub Date: March 7, 2017

ISBN: 978-0-553-39332-3

Page Count: 688

Publisher: Bantam

Review Posted Online: Dec. 7, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2016

Categories:

- BOOK REVIEW
THE TUDORS
by G.J. Meyer

- BOOK REVIEW
EXECUTIVE BLUES
by G.J. Meyer

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

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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

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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INTO THE WILD

by Jon Krakauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1996

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...

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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.

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor will it to readers of Krakauer's narrative. (4 maps) (First printing of 35,000; author tour)