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BAYARD RUSTIN: TROUBLES I'VE SEEN

A BIOGRAPHY

A vividly rendered life of a critical figure in the African- American struggle for civil rights. Bayard Rustin, writes New Yorker staff writer Anderson (This Was Harlem, 1982), was a man of sometimes contradictory parts—so much so that at his funeral service a friend described Rustin (19121987) as ``a Quaker without an ounce of goodyness; an ex-communist without a trace of vindictiveness; a Gandhian without one trace of holiness; an ex-con without one trace of self-pity or self-dramatization; a passionate advocate of civil rights who wasted little time brooding about racism.'' He was also an intellectual of complex, learned tastes, a collector of art and textiles, a skilled interpreter of Bach and Donizetti, a champion of Alvin Ailey's dance company, and a fine athlete. Drawing on interviews with dozens of Rustin's acquaintances and colleagues, Anderson recounts the activist's contributions to African-American culture and to the work of organizations like the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Congress for Racial Equality. Jailed for 28 months for refusing conscription during WW II, Rustin was also an early disciple of Gandhi, and it was he who made the Indian pacifist's ideas an important part of Dr. Martin Luther King's program. Those ideas were lost in the militancy of the late 1960s and early '70s, Anderson writes, and Rustin's role in the movement was diminished. Anderson carefully examines Rustin's many contributions to the civil-rights movement, noting that ``no important black figure of his generation responded to as many causes in which the values of democracy and fair play were at stake.'' Although he never achieved prominence as a leader in these causes, and indeed was marginalized in many of them, Rustin was, Anderson maintains, of inestimable importance in making them known. This well-written biography is a fitting tribute to a great civil libertarian. (20 b&w photos, not seen)

Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1997

ISBN: 0-06-016702-5

Page Count: 400

Publisher: HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1996

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HOW TO FIGHT ANTI-SEMITISM

A forceful, necessarily provocative call to action for the preservation and protection of American Jewish freedom.

Known for her often contentious perspectives, New York Times opinion writer Weiss battles societal Jewish intolerance through lucid prose and a linear playbook of remedies.

While she was vividly aware of anti-Semitism throughout her life, the reality of the problem hit home when an active shooter stormed a Pittsburgh synagogue where her family regularly met for morning services and where she became a bat mitzvah years earlier. The massacre that ensued there further spurred her outrage and passionate activism. She writes that European Jews face a three-pronged threat in contemporary society, where physical, moral, and political fears of mounting violence are putting their general safety in jeopardy. She believes that Americans live in an era when “the lunatic fringe has gone mainstream” and Jews have been forced to become “a people apart.” With palpable frustration, she adroitly assesses the origins of anti-Semitism and how its prevalence is increasing through more discreet portals such as internet self-radicalization. Furthermore, the erosion of civility and tolerance and the demonization of minorities continue via the “casual racism” of political figures like Donald Trump. Following densely political discourses on Zionism and radical Islam, the author offers a list of bullet-point solutions focused on using behavioral and personal action items—individual accountability, active involvement, building community, loving neighbors, etc.—to help stem the tide of anti-Semitism. Weiss sounds a clarion call to Jewish readers who share her growing angst as well as non-Jewish Americans who wish to arm themselves with the knowledge and intellectual tools to combat marginalization and defuse and disavow trends of dehumanizing behavior. “Call it out,” she writes. “Especially when it’s hard.” At the core of the text is the author’s concern for the health and safety of American citizens, and she encourages anyone “who loves freedom and seeks to protect it” to join with her in vigorous activism.

A forceful, necessarily provocative call to action for the preservation and protection of American Jewish freedom.

Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019

ISBN: 978-0-593-13605-8

Page Count: 224

Publisher: Crown

Review Posted Online: Aug. 22, 2019

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ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN

Bernstein and Woodward, the two Washington Post journalists who broke the Big Story, tell how they did it by old fashioned seat-of-the-pants reporting — in other words, lots of intuition and a thick stack of phone numbers. They've saved a few scoops for the occasion, the biggest being the name of their early inside source, the "sacrificial lamb" H**h Sl**n. But Washingtonians who talked will be most surprised by the admission that their rumored contacts in the FBI and elsewhere never existed; many who were telephoned for "confirmation" were revealing more than they realized. The real drama, and there's plenty of it, lies in the private-eye tactics employed by Bernstein and Woodward (they refer to themselves in the third person, strictly on a last name basis). The centerpiece of their own covert operation was an unnamed high government source they call Deep Throat, with whom Woodward arranged secret meetings by positioning the potted palm on his balcony and through codes scribbled in his morning newspaper. Woodward's wee hours meetings with Deep Throat in an underground parking garage are sheer cinema: we can just see Robert Redford (it has to be Robert Redford) watching warily for muggers and stubbing out endless cigarettes while Deep Throat spills the inside dope about the plumbers. Then too, they amass enough seamy detail to fascinate even the most avid Watergate wallower — what a drunken and abusive Mitchell threatened to do to Post publisher Katherine Graham's tit, and more on the Segretti connection — including the activities of a USC campus political group known as the Ratfuckers whose former members served as a recruiting pool for the Nixon White House. As the scandal goes public and out of their hands Bernstein and Woodward seem as stunned as the rest of us at where their search for the "head ratfucker" has led. You have to agree with what their City Editor Barry Sussman realized way back in the beginning — "We've never had a story like this. Just never."

Pub Date: June 18, 1974

ISBN: 0671894412

Page Count: 372

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: Oct. 10, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1974

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