Gartner calls this a first-of-its-kind work of “psycho-journalism.” If this is the prototype, let’s hope production is...
A bizarre attempt to uncover what makes the 42nd president tick.
Employing a diagnosis he explored in The Hypomanic Edge (2005), Gartner (Psychology/Johns Hopkins Univ.) identifies Bill Clinton as “hypomanic,” a personality disorder he defines as characterized by excessive energy, creativity and charisma. The author relentlessly scatters “Look, that was hypomanic!” moments throughout the book as he traces Clinton’s life, but readers will soon conclude that these shed little light on what kind of president he was or man he is. Gartner promises that his book will treat its subject as a therapist would a patient. Since he never spent any actual time with Clinton, the “therapy” consists of a ham-handed and superficial accounting of how Clinton acted out childhood dramas during the central moments of his life, including the infamous rendezvous with Monica Lewinsky. The author fails to sustain even this slight approach: Clipping passages from the many accounts of the Clinton presidency, he assembles little more than a compilation. Gartner asserts early on that he is fond of the former president, but that hardly explains this hagiography. The gushing text explains away the former president’s missteps as misunderstandings, his political failures as the failure of the citizenry to understand how someone so smart and empathetic really just had their best interests at heart. Gossipy analysis and ’90s nostalgia make this silly book something of a guilty pleasure, but the author certainly hasn’t provided anything new or groundbreaking.
Gartner calls this a first-of-its-kind work of “psycho-journalism.” If this is the prototype, let’s hope production is halted.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-312-36976-7
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2008
BOOK REVIEW
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
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.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
SEEN & HEARD
Well-told and admonitory.
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
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