An exhaustive, nicely done biography of the late Idaho senator Frank Church, whose four terms (1957-81) ran from the beginning of the Cold War to the post-Vietnam era. A liberal Democrat who ``resembled a rejuvenated New Dealer,'' Church represented an extremely conservative and Republican state. Ashby (History/Washington State Univ.) and journalist Gramer note that even though he developed considerable national clout, Church was always fighting for survival back home. Elected at age 32, he was one of the youngest senators in US history. His role in passing the 1957 Civil Rights Act, by supporting the removal of a section deemed too liberal by some, gave early notice that Church would ``balance his idealistic impulses with political realities.'' But this ``tendency to compromise,'' write Ashby and Gramer, ``also provided the basis for criticism that followed him'' throughout his career. The keynote speaker at the 1960 Democratic National Convention, Church helped usher in the ``new liberalism'' of the Kennedy administration. His ardent sponsorship of wilderness- preservation legislation alienated Idaho big business, and his emerging role as a Senate ``dove'' during the 1960s spurred a right-wing backlash that culminated in a nearly successful recall movement in 1967. He survived, according to the authors, by politicking against gun-control legislation in his state. He defied his own party's president on the war in Southeast Asia, and it was his bipartisan Cooper-Church amendment that—on paper, at least- -prohibited the use of ground troops in Laos, Cambodia, and Thailand. He achieved national recognition when he chaired committees investigating the CIA and ITT's manipulation of the Chilean elections and, later, looking into the ``profits from Pentagon-sponsored export sales'' garnered by weapons manufacturers Lockheed and Northrop. While overtly pro-Church, this is nonetheless a fine examination of the fate of New Deal liberalism, its role in the Cold War, and its failure to stand up to what the authors call the ``growing power of the New Right.''
Pub Date: April 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-87422-103-X
Page Count: 792
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1994
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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