The fifth volume in Starr's grand and wide-ranging history of California (Endangered Dreams, 1995, etc.). Drawing on a wealth of sources, the author offers a panoramic account of the Golden State during the turning-point years before America's entry into WW II. While he first surveys communities (Big Sur, Carmel, Palm Springs, Pasadena, et al.) whose affluent lifestyles not only survived the Depression but also set the pace for the rest of the country, Starr moves on to profile the West Coast's academic enclaves (Berkeley, Palo Alto, Westwood) and great cities (Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco). Covered as well are those who contributed to California's rich cultural heritage in literature (Cain, Chandler, Hammett, and West, to name but a few), painting (notably, the federally subsidized muralists who recorded the past of ``the state with a Mexican accent''), and photography (Ansel Adams, Edward Weston). Not too surprisingly, Starr devotes considerable attention to Hollywood and how its studio system marshaled the artistic resources of a generation to help America (and the wider world) through hard times. In an engrossing chapter felicitously titled ``Ich Bin ein Sñdkalifornier,'' he recounts how the rise of the Third Reich induced scores of German actors, composers, writers, and other intellectuals to seek refuge from Nazi oppression in filmdom's capital, where they promptly and thoroughly Europeanized the motion-picture industry. Using this productive context as a departure point, the author closes with a somber assessment of the ways in which California's ÇmigrÇ communities dealt with a global outbreak of anti-Semitism and (with fellow exile Leon Feuchtwanger) pondered whether Jewish civilization could reconstitute itself. A penetrating addition to an altogether splendid series, which (thanks to the broad appeal of its subject matter and period) could prove a breakout book.
Pub Date: April 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-19-510079-4
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1997
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Unsurprising but perfectly competent and seamlessly of a piece with her Living History (2003). And will Hillary run? The...
Former Secretary of State Clinton tells—well, if not all, at least what she and her “book team” think we ought to know.
If this memoir of diplomatic service lacks the preening self-regard of Henry Kissinger’s and the technocratic certainty of Dean Acheson’s, it has all the requisite evenhandedness: Readers have the sense that there’s not a sentence in it that hasn’t been vetted, measured and adjusted for maximal blandness. The news that has thus far made the rounds has concerned the author’s revelation that the Clintons were cash-strapped on leaving the White House, probably since there’s not enough hanging rope about Benghazi for anyone to get worked up about. (On that current hot-button topic, the index says, mildly, “See Libya.”) The requisite encomia are there, of course: “Losing these fearless public servants in the line of duty was a crushing blow.” So are the crises and Clinton’s careful qualifying: Her memories of the Benghazi affair, she writes, are a blend of her own experience and information gathered in the course of the investigations that followed, “especially the work of the independent review board charged with determining the facts and pulling no punches.” When controversy appears, it is similarly cushioned: Tinhorn dictators are valuable allies, and everyone along the way is described with the usual honorifics and flattering descriptions: “Benazir [Bhutto] wore a shalwar kameez, the national dress of Pakistan, a long, flowing tunic over loose pants that was both practical and attractive, and she covered her hair with lovely scarves.” In short, this is a standard-issue political memoir, with its nods to “adorable students,” “important partners,” the “rich history and culture” of every nation on the planet, and the difficulty of eating and exercising sensibly while logging thousands of hours in flight and in conference rooms.
Unsurprising but perfectly competent and seamlessly of a piece with her Living History (2003). And will Hillary run? The guiding metaphor of the book is the relay race, and there’s a sense that if the torch is handed to her, well….Pub Date: June 10, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4767-5144-3
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 13, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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