A solid, well-written, anecdote-filled political biography.
The story of a Cuban-American politician on the Republican fast track.
Born in 1971, Marco Antonio Rubio rose rapidly from West Miami city commissioner to Florida house speaker to his current post as junior U.S. senator from Florida. His rapid rise has led many to predict he will one day be elected president. “American politics had never seen anything like him: a young, made-for-YouTube Hispanic Republican with realistic national prospects,” writes Washington Post reporter Roig-Franzia. The author begins with the Rubio family’s arrival in the U.S. in 1956, during the last years of the Batista regime. In need of work, Rubio’s grandfather, a bartender, returned to Castro’s Cuba in 1959 and took a minor treasury post. Three years later, uneasy with Castro’s regime, he returned to Miami and became a permanent resident in 1967. Rubio grew up in Miami’s Little Havana and moved with his family to Las Vegas for several years, where he was baptized a Mormon. It was the first of several changes in his religious affiliation. Born Roman Catholic, Rubio returned to Catholicism when the family came back to Miami, where he played football in high school and studied law at the University of Miami. Later, in what his staff calls his “faith journey,” he would straddle the Baptist and Catholic faiths. Entering politics in his mid-20s, he quickly won right-wing establishment mentors, notably former Florida governor Jeb Bush. In 2009, he was saluted in a National Review cover story. Drawing on interviews, Roig-Franzia details controversies over Rubio’s credit card spending while in the Florida house, his attempts to claim a place as the son of Castro exiles, and his inspiring abilities as a public speaker. Now, writes the author, Rubio is a “cagey political veteran” whose national influence far exceeds his seniority in Congress.
A solid, well-written, anecdote-filled political biography.Pub Date: June 19, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4516-7545-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2012
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
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
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