An evenhanded, timely biography of a boisterous politician who "personif[ies] a media-focused, celebrity-obsessed,...
A hard-boiled account of the career of Chris Christie, colorful governor and presidential aspirant, "the first bona fide American YouTube politician."
Peabody Award winner Katz knows Christie well. As a print and radio reporter, the author has covered the governor for more than five years; in this capacity, he makes frequent cameo appearances in the book, sometimes as the butt of Christie’s jokes. In this debut, Katz surveys Christie's career—from failed local politician to U.S. Attorney for New Jersey to governor with reportorial swagger and a strong measure of cynicism. As a Republican governor in an overwhelmingly blue state, Christie had to reach accommodations with the local Democratic warlords in order to get anything done; the author permits these understandings to be viewed as tough-minded practical politics or as grimy backroom deals, depending on the reader's inclinations. For much of the book, Katz seems mildly vexed to have to portray a popular Republican governor working closely with the opposition party to achieve more effective and fiscally responsible government than his state had seen in many years. He freely gives Christie his due in this regard while peppering the narrative with fair criticism and occasional lapses into innuendo and snark. Shifting chronologies sometimes make it hard to follow Katz's otherwise crisp narrative, which comes most vividly alive in his presentation of "Bridgegate," the closure of lanes on the George Washington Bridge in September 2013 by rogue Christie appointees to inconvenience the mayor and people of Fort Lee. Written in the present tense, the account of the events and the subsequent investigations races forward with the pulse of a gripping political thriller. Never tied directly to the scandal, Christie nevertheless suffered lasting political damage in its wake, as his unvarnished speaking style and Jersey-tough shtick began to work against him.
An evenhanded, timely biography of a boisterous politician who "personif[ies] a media-focused, celebrity-obsessed, blunt-talking U.S. of A."Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4767-8266-9
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Threshold Editions/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 21, 2016
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
An engrossing, intense, and highly descriptive narrative chronicling the ghastly conditions three pregnant women suffered...
The incredible true story of three Jewish women who survived the Holocaust.
Priska, Rachel, and Anka were married Jewish women in their early 20s when the Nazis took control of Europe. Like millions of other Jews, they were forced to give up their normal lives, all of their belongings, and their homes. Shuttled into ghettos and then off to one of the most notorious camps, Auschwitz II-Birkenau, they suffered through the Nazis’ increasing atrocities. But these three women all held a secret: they were pregnant. They were moved from Auschwitz and ended up in Mauthausen, another notorious death camp. With facing the most horrible conditions imaginable, all three gave birth right before the Allies accepted Germany’s surrender. In this meticulously detailed account, Holden (Haatchi & Little B: The Inspiring True Story of One Boy and His Dog, 2014, etc.) compiles an enormous amount of information from interviews, letters, historical records, and personal visits to the sites where this story unfolded. The graphic history places readers in the moment and provides a sense of the enduring power of love that Priska, Rachel, and Anka had for their unborn children and for the husbands they so desperately hoped to see after the war. Even though it occurred more than 70 years ago, the story’s truth is so chillingly portrayed that it seems as if it could have happened recently. These three women and their infants survived in the face of death, and, Holden writes, “their babies went on to have babies of their own and create a second and then a third generation, all of whom continue to live their lives in defiance of Hitler’s plan to erase them from history and from memory.”
An engrossing, intense, and highly descriptive narrative chronicling the ghastly conditions three pregnant women suffered through at the hands of the Nazis.Pub Date: May 5, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-237025-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2015
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