A well-informed and -researched dissection of McKinley’s overlooked influence.
Longtime GOP strategist and political consultant Rove (Courage and Consequence: My Life as a Conservative in the Fight, 2010) examines the rise to power of William McKinley during a fated moment in the country’s history.
McKinley, perhaps best known by Americans for the Alaskan mountain that once bore his name and the infamy of being one of the few American presidents to have been assassinated, was a vital and critical link in the history of the presidency. As Rove argues, McKinley’s rise to power in the election of 1896 resolved many of the issues that had dogged American politics since the end of the Civil War, ushering in a realignment of political priorities and a drive into the modern era. Though this is often attributed to his vice president and successor, Theodore Roosevelt, Rove insists that McKinley laid the foundation for the party’s dominance from 1896 to 1932. As a natural-born leader and orator who quickly rose to the rank of major in the Union Army during the Civil War, McKinley practiced law in Canton, Ohio, before entering his freshman year in Congress at the age of 34 in 1877. Ever loyal to the Republican Party, it was not until the 1894 midterm cycle that McKinley began to forge his image as a possible presidential candidate after a relentless stumping tour that brought him national attention. Rove proves himself a surprisingly nimble and adept writer, juxtaposing shrewd political analysis with narrative verve. He expertly breaks down the challenges of McKinley’s 1896 campaign, which he calls “the first modern presidential primary campaign”—namely, the battle over currency and his policy of protective tariffs. Set against the backdrop of the ongoing recession caused by the Panic of 1893, McKinley’s campaign and defeat of Democrat William Jennings Bryan ensured support of “sound” money (gold) and would lead to the American century.
A well-informed and -researched dissection of McKinley’s overlooked influence.Pub Date: Nov. 24, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4767-5295-2
Page Count: 356
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 19, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2015
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
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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