The boldface names give the book curb appeal, but this memoir’s hidden strength is its testimony to the beauty and...
Portrait of the enduring romance between Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Franks and long-serving New York County district attorney Robert Morgenthau.
Franks (My Father’s Secret War: A Memoir, 2007, etc.) looks back on her life and marriage to the much older Morgenthau with focus and candor, and she endeavors to “talk about the personal life that he has kept so private during his forty-five years as a public figure.” The author first depicts their mutual attraction against the tumult of 1970s New York City, which had driven the rebellious, feminist Franks to become a Times reporter: “I ended up deciding not to join the Weathermen and to write its story instead.” Yet, she scandalized her fellow leftists in 1976 by dating Morgenthau, a low-key yet powerful establishment scion (his father was a prominent Franklin Roosevelt adviser, and he’d served heroically in World War II, as had her own father) who enjoyed public approval and a reputation for rectitude during a chaotic, high-crime era. Once they married, Franks contended with Morgenthau’s difficulty in moving past his revered first wife, who died following a painful bout with cancer. She also struggled to move her writing forward despite the duties of a “society wife,” though she continued to pursue prominent projects, such as her controversial interview with Hillary Clinton following the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Franks’ chiseled prose demonstrates her chops as a veteran journalist, although the narrative slackens somewhat as the couple settles into domesticity and Morgenthau continues to score high-profile legal victories. They encountered rough patches and periods of quarrel but also successfully raised two children in addition to Morgenthau’s earlier family. Ultimately, they always returned to a state of marital grace: “I rather envied Bob’s ability to start every moment anew, as though the present were the future and the past never happened.”
The boldface names give the book curb appeal, but this memoir’s hidden strength is its testimony to the beauty and difficulty of a long-term marriage.Pub Date: Aug. 19, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-374-28080-2
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Sarah Crichton/Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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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