The former foreign minister for the Federal Republic of Germany reports on his accomplishments. Genscher's career as a lion of foreign policy is long and distinguished and his 18-year tenure (197492) as West German minister of foreign affairs unparalleled. He was the ``architect'' of the bumpy and still unfinished process of German unification. In addition to that story, he details his work with Gorbachev and Shevardnadze on perestroika, his attempts to consolidate the European Union at Maastricht, and the German role in the Gulf War. What may strike the American reader of this memoir of power and influence, though, is its tone. Postwar German politics has been characterized by a studied distance from the language of rhetorical passion that characterized the Nazi era. Genscher has composed his memoir in this dispassionate, even chilly idiom. It is Genscher's narrative strategy to stick to the facts of his day-to-day policymaking, while often ignoring the larger questions. For example, many view the German Yugoslav policy as his greatest blunder. Germany broke ranks with the other Western powers by prematurely recognizing Croatia as an independent state. Genscher shows the rational steps that went into this decision, simplistically casting himself as the friend of freedom-loving Croatia and the enemy of oppressive Serbia. However, he discusses neither the fraught history of Croatian-German-Serbian relations nor the objections of the US to early recognition of Croatia. He dismisses out of hand the fear, expressed by many at the time, that the accelerated breakup of the Yugoslav state would result in a war, not in Croatia, but in Bosnia—which it did. By sticking to the facts and omitting the hard parts, Genscher tells a bright and uncomplicated story of his success. An essential book for anyone interested in European policymaking, but the great man plays his cards too close to his chest.
Pub Date: Jan. 14, 1998
ISBN: 0-553-06712-5
Page Count: 752
Publisher: Broadway
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1997
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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