by John Kenneth Galbraith ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 29, 1998
Collections of letters are precious when the correspondents are prominent and the content is of enduring value, for example the Adams/Jefferson letters. In this volume the correspondents are certainly important people, but it’s hard to find additional justification for publication. Veteran economist Galbraith’s letters to John F. Kennedy, from 1959 through mid-1963, are grouped by editor Goodman (History/Rutgers Univ.) into three sections: politics, economics, and foreign affairs. The last is by far the meatiest; the first two are brief and seemingly padded by trivial notes communicating pleasantries or future intentions and are included only to display a clever phrase in the prose. However, Galbraith’s commentary on taxation does provide striking examples both of how things never seem to change and of how thoroughly they can change. On one hand, he notes the existence of “a large part of American conservative and business opinion” that favors tax cuts no matter what the consequences to the budget or the country. On the other hand, in warning against a tax cut, Galbraith claims that “the worst tag of all” is “irresponsibility,” a seemingly archaic view now, when irresponsibility on tax cuts (in relation to budget demands) is apparently a requirement for election to public office. The letters relating to foreign affairs are more substantive, reflecting Galbraith’s posting as ambassador to India. From this vantage point he felt free to comment on south and southeast Asian affairs in general, and notable among his observations are repeated warnings against relying on Diem in Vietnam, an assessment that proved accurate but went unheeded. Reports on politics in India and a military clash with China will be of moderate interest for students of south Asian politics, but ultimately there is little here to capture the attention of the general reader.
Pub Date: May 29, 1998
ISBN: 0-674-52837-9
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Harvard Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1998
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by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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by Elie Wiesel ; edited by Alan Rosen
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by Elie Wiesel ; illustrated by Mark Podwal
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by Elie Wiesel ; translated by Marion Wiesel
by Tom Clavin ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 21, 2020
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.
Rootin’-tootin’ history of the dry-gulchers, horn-swogglers, and outright killers who populated the Wild West’s wildest city in the late 19th century.
The stories of Wyatt Earp and company, the shootout at the O.K. Corral, and Geronimo and the Apache Wars are all well known. Clavin, who has written books on Dodge City and Wild Bill Hickok, delivers a solid narrative that usefully links significant events—making allies of white enemies, for instance, in facing down the Apache threat, rustling from Mexico, and other ethnically charged circumstances. The author is a touch revisionist, in the modern fashion, in noting that the Earps and Clantons weren’t as bloodthirsty as popular culture has made them out to be. For example, Wyatt and Bat Masterson “took the ‘peace’ in peace officer literally and knew that the way to tame the notorious town was not to outkill the bad guys but to intimidate them, sometimes with the help of a gun barrel to the skull.” Indeed, while some of the Clantons and some of the Earps died violently, most—Wyatt, Bat, Doc Holliday—died of cancer and other ailments, if only a few of old age. Clavin complicates the story by reminding readers that the Earps weren’t really the law in Tombstone and sometimes fell on the other side of the line and that the ordinary citizens of Tombstone and other famed Western venues valued order and peace and weren’t particularly keen on gunfighters and their mischief. Still, updating the old notion that the Earp myth is the American Iliad, the author is at his best when he delineates those fraught spasms of violence. “It is never a good sign for law-abiding citizens,” he writes at one high point, “to see Johnny Ringo rush into town, both him and his horse all in a lather.” Indeed not, even if Ringo wound up killing himself and law-abiding Tombstone faded into obscurity when the silver played out.
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21458-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
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