The sordid, sweeping history of what Kennedy insider Pierre Salinger dubbed “a blood feud.”
Seattle Times investigations editor Neff (The Wrong Man: The Final Verdict on the Dr. Sam Sheppard Murder Case, 2001, etc.) turns his attention to the visceral war of wills between Bobby Kennedy and Jimmy Hoffa.
This account of Kennedy’s crusade against corrupt union officials and organized crime may not be as cinematic as Bryan Burrough’s Public Enemies or as darkly subversive as the fiction of James Ellroy, although it does share a kindred spirit with them. However, by transposing these two larger-than-life characters and utilizing his own considerable investigative skills, Neff succeeds in shining a light on one of the darker corners of American history. The book opens on a critical moment, as Kennedy learns of the assassination of his brother in Dallas and Hoffa coldly observes, “Bobby Kennedy is just another lawyer now.” From there, the story jumps back to 1956, when Kennedy was chief counsel for the Senate investigations committee and Hoffa was vice president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, using intimidation, threats, fraud, and violence to control his sphere of influence. Their conflict was inevitable, as Kennedy saw Hoffa as “weak, unbalanced, crooked and greedy,” while Hoffa considered the Kennedy brothers to be “ ‘spoiled brats,’ soft-handed Ivy League types who had little understanding of the working man.” Neff deftly portrays their volatile relationship through the McClellan Committee hearings in the Senate, where Hoffa displayed an intuitive ability to avoid telling the truth, all the way through the Kennedy presidency, when the younger Kennedy used his startling appointment as Attorney General to form the “Get Hoffa” squad to dig deep into the labor leader’s taxes and finances. At times, the book reads like a spy novel, as both camps used double agents, secret recordings, tails, and blackmail to keep track of their opponents. Ultimately, Kennedy is something of an enigma, while Neff paints Hoffa as having a grudging affection for his nemesis.
The sordid, sweeping history of what Kennedy insider Pierre Salinger dubbed “a blood feud.”Pub Date: July 7, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-316-73834-7
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: March 31, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
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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