by James Tertius de Kay ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 12, 2012
A highly readable, somewhat fawning, ultimately credible biography of an ambitious, energetic risk-taker.
Long before he steered the country through both the Depression and World War II, Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882–1945) was a headstrong fellow who knew what he wanted, played for keeps and mastered the art of taking charge.
FDR inspires the love of biographers, and naval historian de Kay (A Rage for Glory: The Life of Commodore Stephen Decatur, USN, 2007, etc.) can lay on his ardor with a trowel. Nonetheless, his book, focused on Roosevelt’s first forays into public office, tells a convincing story of how a privileged young man proved he was as good as his famous name. Starting political life as a New York state senator, he ran afoul of Boss Charles F. Murphy of Tammany Hall when he backed the wrong horse for a U.S. Senate seat. As a “crusader for good government,” he gained the approval of Woodrow Wilson, the newly elected and equally reform-minded New Jersey governor who would soon become president. As Wilson’s Assistant Secretary of the Navy, FDR, a naval enthusiast from boyhood, tackled his new role with the plucky presumption of a young man who was sure he ought to be running the place. FDR was hawkish on America’s entry into World War I, frequently locking horns with his boss, Josephus Daniels, and his commander in chief. De Kay is sympathetic to FDR as a bull-headed problem-solver who let nothing stand in his way where his Navy was concerned, the man who took the initiative on numerous major wartime projects. The author is also fair in noting FDR’s overreach, his ego and his gambler’s instinct—whether it meant having a potentially career-wrecking affair with his wife's secretary or making an ill-advised run for the Senate.
A highly readable, somewhat fawning, ultimately credible biography of an ambitious, energetic risk-taker.Pub Date: March 12, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-60598-285-4
Page Count: 312
Publisher: Pegasus
Review Posted Online: Nov. 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2011
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BOOK REVIEW
by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
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
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by Elie Wiesel ; edited by Alan Rosen
BOOK REVIEW
by Elie Wiesel ; illustrated by Mark Podwal
BOOK REVIEW
by Elie Wiesel ; translated by Marion Wiesel
by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 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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