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THE DEAN

Name: THE DEAN
Author: John D. Dingell Jr.
ISBN: 978-0-06-257199-1

THE BEST SEAT IN THE HOUSE

by John D. Dingell Jr. with David Bender ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 4, 2018

A hard-hitting critique of a nation “in mortal peril.”

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The longest-serving member of Congress recalls a time when government worked for the people.

In a feisty memoir, Michigan representative Dingell (b. 1926), a Democrat, looks back at nearly six decades of public service, recounting some of his proudest accomplishments, toughest fights, and the regrettable transformation of Congress from “largely a place of comity and mutual respect across the aisle” to a rancorous, partisan body reflecting the “cancer of cynicism eating away at our country” under a president unfit for office. Half of the memoir celebrates the career of the author’s father, a congressman who championed social justice and economic fairness. When John Dingell Sr. died in 1955, his son was persuaded to run for his seat; at the age of 29, he won a special election. Serving with 11 presidents and 10 Speakers of the House and casting more than 25,000 votes, Dingell saw Congress pass bipartisan clean-air amendments, the Affordable Care Act, the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, and the Endangered Species Act. He also witnessed the rise of the tea party, which populated the House of Representatives with Republicans who had run “against the very idea of the federal government.” Now retired, he watches in frustration as “Republi-cons work overtime to destroy all we’ve achieved and more,” apparently intent “on driving things backward, to return to an America that was less clean, less safe, less fair.” To counter the “rogue president” and his supporters who, “like lemmings, will follow him over any cliff,” Dingell advises “courage and constant vigilance.” Though it may take decades to restore civility, economic justice, and governmental integrity, he offers some concrete suggestions for achieving those goals: full participation in the electoral system, elimination of money in campaigns, the protection of an independent press, and, most drastically, “the end of minority rule in our legislative and executive branches.” With no prospect of eliminating the Electoral College, Dingell advocates a grass-roots movement aimed at abolishing the Senate by combining the two chambers into one.

A hard-hitting critique of a nation “in mortal peril.”

Pub Date: Dec. 4, 2018

ISBN: 978-0-06-257199-1

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2018

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2018

Categories:

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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)