Not only a lively history of an extraordinary clan, but a perceptive analysis of the clash between loyalty and ambition in...
A readable and informative appraisal of the relationships among the Roosevelt cousins—close in the early years but increasingly strained by conflicting political ambitions and jealousies as FDR became the heir to TR’s progressive political legacy.
In the Middle Ages, the deteriorating relations between the Oyster Bay and Hyde Park Roosevelts would soon have escalated into bloody feuds, but, as Donn (Freud and Jung, not reviewed) vividly details, both factions’ skillful use of the media was no less lethal. She begins her story in 1884, the year Alice Longworth Roosevelt was born to Teddy Roosevelt and Eleanor to TR’s younger brother Elliott. The two were very close as children and teenagers, and Eleanor was TR’s favorite niece as well. Donn details the close-knit childhoods of Oyster Bay and Hyde Park, FDR’s and Eleanor’s courtship and marriage, and Alice’s unhappy marriage to Nicholas Longworth, and then traces the estrangement of the cousins as adults. When TR formed the New Progressive party in 1912 and ran as its candidate for President, Alice in particular felt betrayed by Eleanor’s and FDR’s endorsement of the popular Woodrow Wilson rather than his lackluster opponent as the Democratic candidate. After TR’s death in 1918, his family were even more outraged when his eldest son Ted was selected as the Republican candidate for governor of New York in 1924, and Eleanor not only seconded the Democratic choice but also, mindful that Ted had been falsely accused of involvement in the Teapot Dome scandal, had a mock teapot built on a car she parked wherever he was speaking. The battle lines, once drawn, would harden in the years to come as Alice regaled the press with her often vitriolic critiques of Eleanor and Franklin.
Not only a lively history of an extraordinary clan, but a perceptive analysis of the clash between loyalty and ambition in an epic family drama played out in the public eye. (110 illustrations)Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2001
ISBN: 0-679-44637-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
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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