Vintage Carter, with his always-welcome emphasis on family, place, and the way it really was. Perfect for gift-giving.
From the former president, seasonal reminiscences recalling Christmases past, with tempered nostalgia and beguiling frankness.
Most of the territory is familiar from Carter’s previous memoirs (An Hour Before Daylight, 2001, etc.), but by highlighting the observances of a particular season in places that range from his Georgia hometown to Camp David, Carter infuses them with a fresh sensibility. He begins in the 1930s, when as a young boy he would go out into the woods with his father Earl a few days before Christmas and bring home the perfect red cedar to decorate. As he and his father searched for the tree, they also gathered sedge to make brooms as gifts for family members. Decorations were homemade; gifts were clothes (dreaded) and books (much more welcome); celebrations were rounded off with a fireworks display. Sensitive as usual to the conditions of African-Americans at the time, Carter recalls how his black neighbors celebrated. The local church was the center of their festivities on Christmas Day, the pine tree growing outside was decorated with small presents, and the children had to give recitations before they received their gifts. Family has always been important to the author; even when president, he and Rosalyn managed to get back to Plains for the day itself. As he recalls past Christmases, Carter also briefly sketches the appropriate background: his years at the Naval Academy, his marriage, and his decision to go into politics. He describes Christmases in the Navy (one on a submarine mistakenly reported to have gone down in bad weather near Pearl Harbor), during his terms as governor in the newly decorated mansion in Atlanta, and at the White House. Events in Iran increasingly shadowed the holiday as he worked until the last moments of his presidency to set the hostages free.
Vintage Carter, with his always-welcome emphasis on family, place, and the way it really was. Perfect for gift-giving.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-7432-2491-4
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2001
IN THE NEWS
A basically pessimistic assessment certain to be disputed by those working to solve the problem.
A densely written critical analysis of the current approach to ending world hunger, calling into question the optimism of such technocrat philanthropists as Bill Gates.
Rieff, whose most recent book was a memoir about the death of his mother, Susan Sontag (Swimming in a Sea of Death, 2008), has returned to the broader themes of his earlier books (At the Point of a Gun: Democratic Dreams and Armed Intervention, 2005, etc.), this time focusing on the global food crisis. After first describing the crisis and its multiple causes, the author concludes “that the central question is how to reform it if, indeed, it is not too late to do so.” At the core of the book is a chapter titled “Philanthrocapitalism: A [Self-]Love Story,” which charges that private business, the most politically influential, least regulated, and least democratically accountable sector, is currently entrusted with the welfare and the fate of the powerless and the hungry. The author disputes the view that the political, social, and cultural challenges of the global food crisis can be overcome if only enough money and intelligence are applied. He asserts that “the fundamental problems of the world have always been moral not technological” and that “farming is a culture, not just a means of production.” Rieff provides no ready answers to the food crisis but argues that we must start looking at the problem in a different way. He has clearly done his homework, and the text is rife with references to, and commentary on, the books and essays of others. What is missing is clarity; too often, Rieff builds his sentences like a set of Russian nesting dolls, obscuring an idea by folding in multiple subordinate clauses and parenthetical asides. This is not the most effective approach for this kind of book, which requires sharp ideas expressed clearly; end-of-chapter summaries would have helped general readers.
A basically pessimistic assessment certain to be disputed by those working to solve the problem.Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4391-2387-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2015
In this train-of-thought collection of short essays, all previously published in newspapers or in Penthouse, the bulldog lawyer (Contrary to Popular Opinion, 1992, etc.) attacks the seemingly endless litany of new defense excuses as destroyers of the basic tenets of democracy. Once individual responsibility and the rule of law begin to erode, Dershowitz rails, we are beginning the march towards anarchy. Some of these excuses—conveniently listed in a glossary- -are easy to shoot down, such as the PMS defense (raised by a surgeon charged with drunken driving), the Twinkie defense (used in the now-famous Harvey Milk killing), and the Super Bowl Sunday defense (perhaps this should be O.J. Simpson's approach). Although Dershowitz attacks all abuse excuses, he seems especially vituperative toward feminists such as Catherine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin. His argument against the controversial battered woman's syndrome resembles that of law professor Anne Coughlin (who goes unfootnoted) in arguing that despite its support by many feminist groups, this is actually a regressive approach that considers women unable to control their actions. Dershowitz claims that these abuse defenses actually stigmatize the defendant, implying that all women could become man-killers, or all urban blacks white-killers. He takes no note, however, of the fact that many women wait weeks or months before being accepted into a shelter, nor does he grapple with the problem that, although a sleeping husband may not seem to pose an imminent threat, since one-third of all women murdered in this country (as of 1992) are killed by their husbands and lovers, defining ``imminent threat'' can be tricky. Dershowitz sees a dangerous overall trend away from acknowledging responsibility evidenced in national policies on everything from Bosnia to the death sentence against Salman Rushdie. The general thesis is convincing, and these disparate essays make for interesting if sometimes redundant reading. Only his attack on feminism, however, reaches the level of provocation we expect from Dershowitz.
Pub Date: Oct. 11, 1994
ISBN: 0-316-18135-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1994
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
