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
Anthropologist Kitzinger's (Women as Mothers, 1979) dreary picture of the current state of motherhood in the West leaves one wondering why anyone bothers anymore. New mothers, she says, are devalued by society and perhaps by themselves, prey to the exhortations of the medical establishment and so-called parenting experts, and plied by the media with images of unattainably perfect motherhood. She contrasts the West, where medicalized birth is ``depersonalized,'' with traditional cultures, where childbirth remains a ``social act.'' No doubt a society, such as ours, that still views motherhood as a deviation from the norm needs some attitude adjustment. But the question still seems open as to whether a woman would rather have prenatal care in the form of regular, if alienating visits to the obstetrician or in the form of exhortations, made to Jamaican women, not to drink soursop juice to avoid excessive labor pain. Kitzinger provides an unusual and enlightening tour of mothering practices around the world, from India to Zambia, Israel, and China. She is suggesting that we combine the best of mothering traditions from pre-and post- industrial societies—but how to accomplish it must be the subject of another book.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-201-40776-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Addison-Wesley
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
Though the administration may be remembered as the worst in American history, the people seem mostly silent. One wishes that...
New York Times columnist Rich delivers a savaging sermon on the US government’s “rampant cronyism, the empty sloganeering of ‘compassionate conservativism,’ the reckless lack of planning for all government operations except tax cuts”—and so much more.
Anyone who knows his work will know that Rich is no fan of either George Bush, a man “not conversant with reality as most Americans had experienced it,” or the Bush administration. In this blend of journalism and mentalités-style history—that is, the study of the mindsets that underlie and produce events—Rich looks closely and critically at the White House’s greatest hits, from the 2001 defense of gas-guzzling as essential to the American way of life to “Heckuva job, Brownie” to the ongoing morass of Iraq. By Rich’s account, of course, that parade of missteps is organic; Bush and company cannot help but err. In an effort to disguise that track record, the Republicans have exercised single-minded control of the grand narrative of the last five years, at least in part because they have exercised quasi-totalitarian control over the news media. (They are nearly forgotten already, but one needs to remember Judith Miller, Jeff Gannon, Karen Ryan and various columnists and commentators paid off to repeat the party line.) Not for nothing did a White House adviser reveal to one journalist that his bosses were set on creating their “own reality,” one that all Americans were expected to share; not for nothing did that reality include spinning amazing lies about everything from the death of football- and war hero Pat Tillman to the kidnapping of Jessica Lynch to the government’s preparedness for Katrina. And yet, and yet . . .
Though the administration may be remembered as the worst in American history, the people seem mostly silent. One wishes that Rich had explored that particular mentalité along with the others he so fluently discusses.Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2006
ISBN: 1-59420-098-X
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2006
© Copyright 2026 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.
