How many people are interested now in a meticulous rehash of the late presidential campaign as reported at the county level? Don't be misled — a great many people will be interested. Democrats primarily, to be sure (though maybe some open-minded Republicans will want to see what makes them tick). Michener was first deeply involved in local politics in Hawaii. When he and his wife came back to live near Doylestown- his boyhood home- he found himself caught up in the local organization of the minority-Democratic party. Rucks County was overwhelmingly Republican. With Michener we relive the campaign- going back to the primaries —forward to the difficulties, with relatively little to call on in the way of man power and money, in organizing the campaign. It makes fascinating- surprisingly so- reading, in a cross sectioning of a rural county operation. Michener was working on a volunteer basis, learning how it was done as he went along. Some of the personalities are vividly and vigorously sketched — the workers, the volunteers, the hatchet men, the pros and in the final chapters, some of the key figures on the barnstorming tour. One sees some of the low levels of filth used in the religious attacks — one is aghast at the intolerance and gullibility of the general public. Some of the closely reasoned arguments the steps by which Michener — personally- became a dedicated Kennedy man — may even win some waverers at this late date. This is a new approach- after the event- to the kind of thinking we used as citizens.
Pub Date: May 1, 1961
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1961
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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