Not much meat on these bones.
A fan’s notes on Winnie the Tory, tanked-up inventor of the tank and stalwart captain of Team UK in its finest hour.
There’s only one way to look at a politician, said the curmudgeonly H.L. Mencken: down. But Rubin (Law/Yale), born after Churchill left this vale of tears, finds no cause to scorn the venerable Winston. His contemporaries surely did, of course, and for many reasons: some because his mother was American, some because he was apparently indifferent to the working class, some because he was something of a cold fish. Rubin takes up those arguments one by one, offering a sort of point-counterpoint examination of Churchill’s character. Considering him overall to have been a “tragic hero,” she allows that his critics had their points. On Churchill’s legendary drinking, for example, she accepts with regret the possibility that Churchill may have been an alcoholic—after all, he drank 96 bottles of champagne in two weeks after being turned out of office at the end of WWII—but counters, “Given Churchill’s extraordinary accomplishments . . . it’s difficult to credit that dependence on alcohol in any way impaired his health or abilities.” Explaining merrily away, Rubin favors a newsreel style throughout: “When Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s government fell in May 1940, the nation turned to Churchill. At last his unique qualities were brought to bear on a supreme challenge, and with his unshakable optimism, his heroic vision, and above all, his splendid speeches, Churchill roused the spirit of the British people.” Though her research obviously goes deep, a little of this breeziness goes a long way—and doesn’t really do justice to a complex man whose long life began shortly after the Civil War closed and ended the year Malcolm X was assassinated. Consider this a Cliff’s Notes for those too busy to read Churchill himself or one of his many solid biographers.
Not much meat on these bones.Pub Date: June 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45047-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2003
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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