Readers who are nostalgic for the Obama years will appreciate this unique tribute.
A look back at the presidency of Barack Obama.
Denver, Colorado–based photographer Duncan (A Defining Moment, 2010) got a front-row seat to history when she began documenting then U.S. Sen. Obama’s journey to the White House for local African American newspapers in 2006. She photographed the candidate and his supporters at numerous events in the Rocky Mountain state, including the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver. After his election, she continued to document his career nationwide. In this handsome coffee-table book, she couples striking, full-color photos with the full text of many of Obama’s most notable speeches, including his famous 2008 speech on race, his victory-night speech that same year in Chicago, his 2009 and 2013 inaugural addresses, and his 2017 farewell address. Because the book focuses heavily on Obama’s many visits to Colorado, it sometimes neglects other important events. Two Air Force Academy commencement addresses are included, for example, while his remarks on the school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2010 and on the 50th anniversary of the Selma-to-Montgomery civil rights march are notably absent. Some speeches by other political figures are included as well, such as Hillary Clinton’s acceptance of the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination and U.S. Rep. John Lewis’ speech at the 2008 Democratic convention. Supplementary material includes a list of Obama’s accomplishments; information on the presidential limousine, nicknamed “The Beast,” and Air Force One; and Electoral College maps. But it’s the numerous, revealing photos that are the main draw, including one image of a smiling Obama walking onstage to accept his party’s nomination and another of the jubilant faces of his supporters on election night in 2008. The book even provides an inside look at the White House, as Duncan shares photos that she took during the 2014 Holiday Reception, during which she got a few candid shots of the Obamas’ dogs Bo and Sunny. The author’s sincere admiration for Obama shines through in this collection, which effectively commemorates a historic presidency.
Readers who are nostalgic for the Obama years will appreciate this unique tribute.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9847316-4-0
Page Count: 344
Publisher: IJABA Publishing
Review Posted Online: Dec. 2, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-17563-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.
A light-speed tour of (mostly) Western poetry, from the 4,000-year-old Gilgamesh to the work of Australian poet Les Murray, who died in 2019.
In the latest entry in the publisher’s Little Histories series, Carey, an emeritus professor at Oxford whose books include What Good Are the Arts? and The Unexpected Professor: An Oxford Life in Books, offers a quick definition of poetry—“relates to language as music relates to noise. It is language made special”—before diving in to poetry’s vast history. In most chapters, the author deals with only a few writers, but as the narrative progresses, he finds himself forced to deal with far more than a handful. In his chapter on 20th-century political poets, for example, he talks about 14 writers in seven pages. Carey displays a determination to inform us about who the best poets were—and what their best poems were. The word “greatest” appears continually; Chaucer was “the greatest medieval English poet,” and Langston Hughes was “the greatest male poet” of the Harlem Renaissance. For readers who need a refresher—or suggestions for the nightstand—Carey provides the best-known names and the most celebrated poems, including Paradise Lost (about which the author has written extensively), “Kubla Khan,” “Ozymandias,” “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” Wordsworth and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads, which “changed the course of English poetry.” Carey explains some poetic technique (Hopkins’ “sprung rhythm”) and pauses occasionally to provide autobiographical tidbits—e.g., John Masefield, who wrote the famous “Sea Fever,” “hated the sea.” We learn, as well, about the sexuality of some poets (Auden was bisexual), and, especially later on, Carey discusses the demons that drove some of them, Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath among them. Refreshingly, he includes many women in the volume—all the way back to Sappho—and has especially kind words for Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop, who share a chapter.
Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-23222-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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