by Michael D’Antonio ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 28, 2020
Hillary lovers will love it; Hillary haters will hate it.
A deep look at four decades of hating Hillary.
Perhaps no woman in American history has been vilified as viciously or for as long as Hillary Clinton. Ever since Newt Gingrich famously called her a “bitch” 40 years ago, she has been publicly accused of everything from running a pedophile ring in the basement of a Washington, D.C., pizzeria to murdering former Deputy White House Counsel Vincent Foster, or at least participating in his murder (it was ruled suicide). She’s been accused of being a lesbian, being frigid, attending sex parties with her husband, Bill, and having an affair with Foster; of controlling, with Bill, death squads in Arkansas; of waging a 30-year war on the nation’s religious heritages; of being “the antichrist” (Ryan Zinke). She’s been at the heart of a number of supposed scandals involving such things as Whitewater, her emails, and Benghazi. Today, even after her presidential bid failed and she left politics three years ago, the attacks continue. Donald Trump alone has issued more than 200 social media attacks on her. Former Newsday journalist D’Antonio, who wrote The Shadow President: The Truth About Mike Pence (2018), among other biographies and histories, explores every one of the accusations, in detail, with the intent of showing why they are all wrong. He vilifies any writer who vilified her, often spending several paragraphs explaining why this or that writer cannot be trusted, either because they have a history of writing erroneous stories, obviously hate Hillary, or are blatant liars. However, while he builds a convincing case that Republicans have treated Hillary with extraordinary unfairness, hatefulness, and cruelty, the book suffers from its one-sided viewpoint. D’Antonio makes Hillary sound almost like a fairy godmother who can do no wrong; there is hardly a word of criticism throughout the text. Still, just like the author’s previous books, this one is thoroughly researched, clearly written, and often incisive.
Hillary lovers will love it; Hillary haters will hate it.Pub Date: July 28, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-15460-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 18, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
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by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 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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by Jon Krakauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1996
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
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