by Lee H. Hamilton ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 18, 2016
The book—essentially an encapsulation of the author’s philosophy of politics and politicians—is a good choice for those who...
A U.S. Representative from Indiana for 34 years reviews the best of the commentaries he sent to his constituents during his years in office.
Hamilton (Global and International Studies/Indiana Univ.; Strengthening Congress, 2009, etc.) provides a solid look at the thinking, actions, and failures from the Lyndon Johnson years to the present. He covers each administration, listing accomplishments as well as the majorities in Congress. The short essays he sent on a regular basis gave the population of Indiana an illuminating view of what was going on in Washington, D.C. He deals with history, policy issues, and how Congress might work better. As a young representative, he learned from the best. As the Medicare bill came up for consideration, Wilbur Mills’ talent at consensus building and respect for minority views taught Hamilton how to get along in Washington. The author has a folksy style, making this book both informative and easy to read. The importance of Congress’ process and procedures hits home immediately, as we see how it has wandered away from its established practices for developing and passing laws. Hamilton’s views on politicians might just renew some readers’ faith in our elected officials. At once encouraging and enlightening, his writings stir hope, and what he says is still important all these years later. In spite of our ills and need for reform, Hamilton has an abiding belief in the essence of representative government and the search for the common good. The need for “civility in Congress,” he writes, “is an art that requires continual application.” He encourages us to find what is “right” in America and to see how well we have endured.
The book—essentially an encapsulation of the author’s philosophy of politics and politicians—is a good choice for those who want to believe in government again.Pub Date: April 18, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-253-02086-4
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Indiana Univ.
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2016
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by Ta-Nehisi Coates ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 8, 2015
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
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The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
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by Ta-Nehisi Coates ; illustrated by Jackie Aher
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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
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