A legal scholar, Rosen sympathizes with Taft’s strict constitutionalism more than many readers will, but he makes a...
A perceptive biography of William Howard Taft (1857-1930).
Serving from 1909 to 1913, Taft was never the most admired president, but he was an intelligent man dogged by strict principles and a lack of political acumen. So argues Atlantic contributing editor Rosen (Law/George Washington Univ.; Louis D. Brandeis: American Prophet, 2016), the CEO of the National Constitution Center, who does not conceal his admiration, describing him as a likable figure who preferred the law to politics. An excellent solicitor general and federal judge, he became a popular figure after William McKinley appointed him governor of the Philippines in 1900 where he proved a superb administrator. Already a friend, Theodore Roosevelt appointed him Secretary of War in 1903, and he became the president’s right-hand man, troubleshooter, and chosen successor. Roosevelt was not aware that Taft, who loved the law above all, believed that a president must never exercise powers beyond those specifically granted by the Constitution. Within a year of taking office, when Taft made this clear and fired Roosevelt’s more activist officials, the former president took bitter offense. Rosen emphasizes that Taft shared Roosevelt’s progressive views on conservation and trust-busting and sometimes went far beyond (he favored a world court). Sadly, Roosevelt’s hostility and Congress’ delight at a president they could safely ignore made his administration a painful experience. When Roosevelt announced his candidacy for the 1912 Republican nomination, he remained America’s most popular figure, but party leaders, immune to his charm, engineered Taft’s renomination. Roosevelt ran anyway, and Taft finished a poor third in a three-way race, but the story had a happy ending when President Warren Harding appointed him Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in 1921 where he did an outstanding job.
A legal scholar, Rosen sympathizes with Taft’s strict constitutionalism more than many readers will, but he makes a convincing case that he was a conscientious president who did his best.Pub Date: March 20, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-8050-6954-9
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Times/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: July 5, 2018
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
A standout immigrant coming-of-age story.
In her first nonfiction book, novelist Grande (Dancing with Butterflies, 2009, etc.) delves into her family’s cycle of separation and reunification.
Raised in poverty so severe that spaghetti reminded her of the tapeworms endemic to children in her Mexican hometown, the author is her family’s only college graduate and writer, whose honors include an American Book Award and International Latino Book Award. Though she was too young to remember her father when he entered the United States illegally seeking money to improve life for his family, she idolized him from afar. However, she also blamed him for taking away her mother after he sent for her when the author was not yet 5 years old. Though she emulated her sister, she ultimately answered to herself, and both siblings constantly sought affirmation of their parents’ love, whether they were present or not. When one caused disappointment, the siblings focused their hopes on the other. These contradictions prove to be the narrator’s hallmarks, as she consistently displays a fierce willingness to ask tough questions, accept startling answers, and candidly render emotional and physical violence. Even as a girl, Grande understood the redemptive power of language to define—in the U.S., her name’s literal translation, “big queen,” led to ridicule from other children—and to complicate. In spelling class, when a teacher used the sentence “my mamá loves me” (mi mamá me ama), Grande decided to “rearrange the words so that they formed a question: ¿Me ama mi mamá? Does my mama love me?”
A standout immigrant coming-of-age story.Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4516-6177-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: June 11, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2012
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