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NIXON RECONSIDERED

Name: NIXON RECONSIDERED
Author: Joan Hoff
ISBN: 0-465-05107-3

by Joan Hoff ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 31, 1994

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The timing certainly couldn't be better for these revisionist musings, which are intended to turn conventional wisdom about Nixon's achievements as president on its head. They don't. Hoff (History/Univ. of Indiana) argues that Nixon's domestic reforms were more notable, and his foreign policy achievements less so, than is widely thought. Nixon, the author asserts, was not so much an ideological conservative as a practitioner of ``aprincipled pragmatism''; he was served by similarly nonideological advisers, like Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Henry Kissinger, whom she terms ``feudal bastards'' (borrowing language used by medieval historians to describe the politically fickle lords and barons of 15th-century England). She contends that Nixon's reform-minded restructuring of the executive branch had long-lasting consequences and that he pursued liberal, activist domestic policies on welfare reform, civil rights, the economy, and the environment. Unfortunately for her book's thesis, however, she does not demonstrate that these policies were wise or well-conceived, even when Nixon was successful in implementing his ideas; indeed, Hoff seems to concede the truth of the conventional view that Nixon's imposition of wage and price controls and abandonment of the Bretton Woods system for regulating international currencies were disastrous. Moreover, she ultimately does not seem to quarrel with the consensus that Nixon demonstrated expertise and vision in foreign policy, particularly in his rapprochement with China—rather, she appears to argue that Nixon's diplomatic achievements were mixed, and that the demise of communism has rendered moot his foreign policy accomplishments. Hoff also revisits the Watergate scandal at considerable length without adding much of anything new. This purportedly groundbreaking analysis of Nixon's complex legacy only reiterates what earlier studies have already established: that Nixon was an activist president who had some enduring influence on American government and policy.

Pub Date: Aug. 31, 1994

ISBN: 0-465-05107-3

Page Count: 576

Publisher: Basic Books

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1994

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | POLITICAL & ROYALTY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

- BOOK REVIEW
THE COOPER’S WIFE IS MISSING
by Joan Hoff & Marion Yeates

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

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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

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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INTO THE WILD

by Jon Krakauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1996

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...

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The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).

Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor will it to readers of Krakauer's narrative. (4 maps) (First printing of 35,000; author tour)