If as the author claims, ``friendship is distinctly underdeveloped'' as a field of study, this weak account of the relationship between David Lloyd George and Winston Churchill is unlikely to promote the concept. It is a pity, because Rintala (Western European Politics/Boston College) has some potentially intriguing material. British politics in the 20th century produced no more impressive figures than Lloyd George, leader of the Liberal Party and prime minister during WW I, and Churchill. Though one was born in relatively humble circumstances in Wales, and the other in Blenheim Castle, they had a surprising amount in common and their friendship lasted for 40 years. Neither went to university; both were adventurers; both were great orators; both led their country in great wars; both escaped the more dire consequences of misjudgment- -in each case, partly through the friendship of the other. The Marconi scandal, an imprudent investment in shares in the American Marconi Company while he was chancellor of the exchequer, might have brought Lloyd George down but for Churchill's help. Lloyd George brought Churchill into his cabinet after the disaster at Gallipoli, for which the latter was blamed by many Conservatives. Unfortunately, Rintala's account is permeated with the obvious (``Hatred is certainly present in politics, but people act out of love, as well''); with error (``Baldwin also hated Churchill''—in fact Stanley Baldwin made Churchill chancellor of the exchequer in the 1920s when he was at the nadir of his fortunes); with obscurity (``Even if a particular friendship were angelic, much humility, as C.S. Lewis saw, is needed if one is to eat the bread of angels without risk''); with gratuitous tastelessness (``There is no evidence that Lloyd George and Churchill had in any respect a sexual relationship with each other''); and with judgments of staggering incomprehension (``[Churchill] loved war more than he loved Lloyd George''). This book, unlike the friendship it chronicles, can't be saved.
Pub Date: March 1, 1995
ISBN: 1-56833-031-6
Page Count: 288
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1995
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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