There's no semblance or pretense of balance in this unauthorized biography of New York's scandal-plagued three-term senator, Alfonse D'Amato—a lack that is both the book's failing and the source of its fascination. The only kind words Lurie (The King Makers, 1971) has for the man who rose from the bottom ranks of Long Island's Nassau County Republican Party to become one of the nation's most powerful politicians are compliments for his adroitness in evading indictment. The author's tone is nasty, and D'Amato's side of the story is nowhere to be found in a rambling, sometimes tedious chronicle. All that said, the book is a must-read for students of American political history. Lurie has assembled a mass of evidence from the public record, from his attendance at several sensational trials, and from interviews. He takes the reader from scandal to scandal and describes, often with incredulity, the way in which D'Amato has escaped unscathed each time. The trials are the heart of the book. In the first, in 1980-81, D'Amato mentor Joseph Margiotta, head of the Nassau County Republican Party, was sent to jail for taking bribes from insurance agents (including D'Amato's father) doing business with the county. In the second, in 1985, a letter written by D'Amato was a key piece of evidence in proving the party guilty of demanding kickbacks from county employees. In the third, D'Amato's brother, Armand, was sent to jail in 1993 for soliciting bribes from a defense contractor. It is Lurie's contention that in each case—and half a dozen other brushes with the law that he describes in detail—D'Amato was saved by his consummate skills in maintaining plausible deniability or by some stroke of fortune. Senator Pothole, a nickname D'Amato loves, has progressed in 32 years from dunning sanitation workers to leading an attack on the president of the United States for alleged ethical lapses. Anyone who would understand this remarkable journey must read Lurie's book.
Pub Date: June 1, 1994
ISBN: 1-55972-227-4
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Birch Lane Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1994
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
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
SEEN & HEARD
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