Drawing on the celebrated correspondence between Thomas Jefferson and James Madison about the newly adopted Constitution, Banning listens in on ``three of many conversations that occurred between two founders on matters of continuing concern.'' (See p. TKTK, The Republic of Letters, for the collected correspondence.) As US minister to France, Jefferson was absent from the US during the deliberations of the Constitutional Convention in 1787 and during the prolonged struggle in 1788 to ratify and establish the Constitution. However, Madison, Jefferson's friend and fellow Virginian, played a significant role during the convention. Banning (History/Univ. of Kentucky; The Jeffersonian Persuasion, not reviewed) shows that Jefferson objected to the lack of a declaration of essential rights in the Constitution, fearing that the newly powerful central government could develop into a despotic monster. Madison initially opposed adoption of such a declaration, arguing that, since the new federal government was one of limited powers, it was unnecessary to limit it with a declaration of rights—and that a bill of rights could prove dangerous in that it could be used to justify attempts to suppress rights not listed in the document. Of course, as Banning points out, Jefferson won that argument: On May 4, 1789, Madison announced in the House of Representatives that he would soon introduce a series of amendments to the infant Constitution. These amendments, which would become the Bill of Rights, were drafted and largely shepherded through the ratification process by Madison. Banning also presents the thoughts of the founders. Jefferson asserted that the public should not be burdened with debts of the previous generations, and even that legislatures should lack the power to bind future generations with indebtedness. Banning writes that what united the seemingly radical Jefferson and the more conservative Madison was a similar notion of ``public spirit,'' characterized by equal commitments to republican ideals and to democratic, majority decision making. A well-crafted work of history that not only gives insight into the lives and thought of the two men but also stimulates thought about the public institutions they helped to create.
Pub Date: Feb. 15, 1995
ISBN: 0-945612-42-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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