Still-raw material that could be of use to Pelosi’s next biographer.
By-the-numbers bio of the Speaker of the House.
Former San Francisco Chronicle Washington bureau chief Sandalow seems unsure whether to like, dislike or fear Nancy Pelosi, whose career he has been covering since 1987 (though, by his account, whom he first met only in 1993). “I have had a hot and cold relationship with Pelosi,” he writes. Apparently Madam Speaker returns the favor, for this is an unauthorized biography chockablock with imagined conversations and scenes that speak to lack of access, unless he were hiding under her bed when the call from the White House came to congratulate her on her election to the nation’s third in command. We will never know. Admittedly, Sandalow notes, Pelosi disdains the press; her attitude probably won’t be improved by this too often ham-fisted piece, with all its unnecessary flourishes (does anyone need to be reminded that San Francisco was home to beatniks?) and choppy paeans to Pelosi’s legendary multitasking abilities (“Each day was a logistical labyrinth. Carpools. Fund raising letters. School plays. Donor meetings. Birthday parties. Printing deadlines. Teacher meetings. Slate cards. Soccer practice. School supplies. Voter files. Press calls. Homework. Thank you notes. Fund raising dinners. Field trips”). Sandalow slowly rises to the occasion as he writes of the impress of Pelosi’s past—born into one political family, married into another—on a career that took off after her first run for political office at the age of 47 and that rapidly led her to one of the most powerful positions in government. Sandalow appreciates his subject’s toughness but sometimes seems not to understand it; there were reasons she endorsed Jack Murtha over Steny Hoyer as her lieutenant, for instance, just as there were reasons for her party to vote Hoyer in instead—and reasons for Pelosi to profess that she was “not a person who has regrets” in the wake.
Still-raw material that could be of use to Pelosi’s next biographer.Pub Date: May 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-59486-807-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Rodale
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2008
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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