A deeply detailed, fascinating characterization of two men, a country, and an era. Sometimes it takes a non-American to see...
British commentator Hodgson (Martin Luther King, 2009, etc.) dissects the administrations of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson.
As a White House correspondent beginning in the early 1960s, the author quickly learned the ins and outs of politics in Washington, D.C. He recalls plenty of fortuitous meetings, the people who helped him with background information, and dinner-party politics. During that time period, a more open environment, he was able to absorb the capital’s methods. Here, Hodgson looks at the two men and two significant questions: if he had lived, would Kennedy have expanded the Vietnam War as Johnson did, and could Kennedy have passed Johnson’s vast domestic reforms? The author compares these two men, certainly apples to oranges, simply stating that Kennedy’s qualities were exaggerated and Johnson’s, underestimated. To be sure, their ambitions were different. Kennedy looked to make his name in foreign policy but was hampered by domestic problems, especially the civil rights movement. Both were devoted to continuing the New Deal and its attendant policies, but Kennedy’s approach was much more cautious. Johnson broadened the scope and accelerated the timetable for projects begun under Kennedy. Of course, Johnson was also undone, in his case by the Vietnam War. Hodgson does an excellent job of analyzing Kennedy’s administration in both the Cuban and Berlin crises. The author also applies his sharp observations to Johnson and his astounding domestic reforms: Medicare, Medicaid, the Civil Rights Act, immigration reform, and federal aid to education. Occasionally, Hodgson gets bogged down in Johnson’s nemesis, the Vietnam quagmire, but his portrayal of these two presidents clearly demonstrates how “how vulnerable public opinion in a democracy is to deceptive stereotypes.”
A deeply detailed, fascinating characterization of two men, a country, and an era. Sometimes it takes a non-American to see what we all missed.Pub Date: May 26, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-300-18050-3
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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