The battles of the Civil War become background scenery in this long, sober examination of the mind and personality of ``Cump'' Sherman, 19th-century American military icon. William Tecumseh Sherman's father named him after a famous Indian chief. At age nine, after his father died, he was taken into the politically powerful Ewing family of Lancaster, Ohio. He sailed through West Point, married a Ewing daughter, drifted through a mediocre military career and a disastrous business one. He returned to the Army but suffered a near nervous breakdown in the early months of the Civil War. Then, after he and Grant won the Battle of Vicksburg, Sherman transformed himself into the most successful and ruthless American general of his age. He was also an outspoken racist, a compulsive womanizer, an oppressive father, and a man with strongly held antidemocratic political views. He court- martialed a civilian newspaper reporter who had written a viciously unfair article about him. In relating the life of the man best known for his ultradestructive 1864 march through Georgia, Fellman (History/Simon Fraser Univ., Canada; Inside War, not reviewed) concentrates on sketching a psychological portrait rather than on blow-by-blow descriptions of Sherman's military exploits. He uses his voluble subject's many letters, speeches, and writings to burrow deeply into his mind. This leads to several intriguing hypotheses involving the relationship between the fear of failure resulting from Sherman's early early debacles and his later success on the battlefield. Fellman's fixation on Sherman's psyche, however, also results in some facile, largely unconvincing psychological analyses. These include discussions about Sherman's ``self-love'' and the contention that Sherman feared ``exposing himself entirely to himself'' because ``there were energies and conflicts inside of him that were frightening even to himself.'' A fresh, needed reinterpretation of Sherman the man, but a bit overwritten and sometimes off-base in its psychologizing.
Pub Date: July 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-679-42966-2
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1995
Categories: BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | HISTORICAL & MILITARY
Did you like this book?
Doyle offers another lucid, inspiring chronicle of female empowerment and the rewards of self-awareness and renewal.
GET IT
More life reflections from the bestselling author on themes of societal captivity and the catharsis of personal freedom.
In her third book, Doyle (Love Warrior, 2016, etc.) begins with a life-changing event. “Four years ago,” she writes, “married to the father of my three children, I fell in love with a woman.” That woman, Abby Wambach, would become her wife. Emblematically arranged into three sections—“Caged,” “Keys,” “Freedom”—the narrative offers, among other elements, vignettes about the soulful author’s girlhood, when she was bulimic and felt like a zoo animal, a “caged girl made for wide-open skies.” She followed the path that seemed right and appropriate based on her Catholic upbringing and adolescent conditioning. After a downward spiral into “drinking, drugging, and purging,” Doyle found sobriety and the authentic self she’d been suppressing. Still, there was trouble: Straining an already troubled marriage was her husband’s infidelity, which eventually led to life-altering choices and the discovery of a love she’d never experienced before. Throughout the book, Doyle remains open and candid, whether she’s admitting to rigging a high school homecoming court election or denouncing the doting perfectionism of “cream cheese parenting,” which is about “giving your children the best of everything.” The author’s fears and concerns are often mirrored by real-world issues: gender roles and bias, white privilege, racism, and religion-fueled homophobia and hypocrisy. Some stories merely skim the surface of larger issues, but Doyle revisits them in later sections and digs deeper, using friends and familial references to personify their impact on her life, both past and present. Shorter pieces, some only a page in length, manage to effectively translate an emotional gut punch, as when Doyle’s therapist called her blooming extramarital lesbian love a “dangerous distraction.” Ultimately, the narrative is an in-depth look at a courageous woman eager to share the wealth of her experiences by embracing vulnerability and reclaiming her inner strength and resiliency.
Doyle offers another lucid, inspiring chronicle of female empowerment and the rewards of self-awareness and renewal.Pub Date: March 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-0125-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
Categories: GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | SELF-HELP
Did you like this book?
PROFILES
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
An engrossing memoir as well as a lively treatise on what extraordinary grace under extraordinary pressure looks like.
15
GET IT
The former first lady opens up about her early life, her journey to the White House, and the eight history-making years that followed.
It’s not surprising that Obama grew up a rambunctious kid with a stubborn streak and an “I’ll show you” attitude. After all, it takes a special kind of moxie to survive being the first African-American FLOTUS—and not only survive, but thrive. For eight years, we witnessed the adversity the first family had to face, and now we get to read what it was really like growing up in a working-class family on Chicago’s South Side and ending up at the world’s most famous address. As the author amply shows, her can-do attitude was daunted at times by racism, leaving her wondering if she was good enough. Nevertheless, she persisted, graduating from Chicago’s first magnet high school, Princeton, and Harvard Law School, and pursuing careers in law and the nonprofit world. With her characteristic candor and dry wit, she recounts the story of her fateful meeting with her future husband. Once they were officially a couple, her feelings for him turned into a “toppling blast of lust, gratitude, fulfillment, wonder.” But for someone with a “natural resistance to chaos,” being the wife of an ambitious politician was no small feat, and becoming a mother along the way added another layer of complexity. Throw a presidential campaign into the mix, and even the most assured woman could begin to crack under the pressure. Later, adjusting to life in the White House was a formidable challenge for the self-described “control freak”—not to mention the difficulty of sparing their daughters the ugly side of politics and preserving their privacy as much as possible. Through it all, Obama remained determined to serve with grace and help others through initiatives like the White House garden and her campaign to fight childhood obesity. And even though she deems herself “not a political person,” she shares frank thoughts about the 2016 election.
An engrossing memoir as well as a lively treatise on what extraordinary grace under extraordinary pressure looks like.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5247-6313-8
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 30, 2018
Categories: GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR
Did you like this book?
© Copyright 2021 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
