Significant ideas entangled in turgid and uninviting prose.
A dense reassessment of an iconic figure in American history with special attention to his notion of race relations as a key to social progress for African-Americans.
West (History/College of the Holy Cross) presents not so much a biography of Washington as a history of an idea. In fact, those hoping to read a narrative about Washington’s life had best look elsewhere, for West buries his biographical details in protracted paragraphs (some featuring words like “problematizing”) that general readers will find more dissuasive than inviting. It is pleasant to take a leisurely journey along the path of a 125-word sentence in Trollope, but following the lengthy, labyrinthine trail blazed by a less skilled writer is merely tedious. This is not to impugn either the author’s research or its results. There is much to think about and learn in these pages. West reminds us that Washington was not the only former slave who lived out a tale worthy of Horatio Alger (who, as the author points out, began publishing his stories about the time Washington was born, in 1856). West also deals frankly with Washington’s nearly fanatical fastidiousness (a former student recalls Washington’s pauses in grammar lessons to chide his charges about their personal hygiene) and with his wont to ridicule blacks in his speeches before white audiences. But West’s principal interest is to explore the origins of Washington’s belief in “race relations” and to analyze its pernicious consequences. Washington and his followers failed to see that their focus on “getting along” delayed rather than accelerated the granting of full human and civil rights to blacks. De jure and de facto segregation were the result; Jim Crow was the beneficiary. West believes that Washington’s notion persists in many quarters and concludes that “American democracy was betrayed by the American people.” The author offers interesting assessments of other commentators on race—especially Gunnar Myrdal and (a surprise) William Dean Howells.
Significant ideas entangled in turgid and uninviting prose.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-231-13048-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Columbia Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2005
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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