Loads of down-and-dirty political fun.
Hillary Rodham Clinton's advance man recounts his adventures as the head staffer responsible for assuring glitch-free traveling appearances for the First Lady.
A political animal since his teenage years, Halley is invited to advance for Hillary before the 1992 presidential election. Initially reluctant to work for a “secondary” (this old hand advances only for principals), the author is lured away from his desk job to plan her swing through New England and finds himself hooked for the next decade. Equal parts event-manager, crowd-builder, public-relations man, and problem-solver, Halley looks for the best photo ops in Argentina, chases yaks in Mongolia, and makes sure that Hillary is never seen in the same place as Fidel Castro when the two of them are booked into the same Swiss hotel. With a story for every location, and an inside look at how the administration responds to major events ranging from the Oklahoma City bombing to the Lewinsky scandal, Halley tells all in a salty, engaging tone of a Boston boy who is still thrilled to have hit the political big time. Working in close proximity to the first family only increases the author's respect for them, though he is most loyal to Hillary; the author displays tempered admiration for the president, but nonetheless engages him in a shoving match when Bill wants to take the stage at a Hillary event before Halley's lighting cues have started. Halley does not exempt himself from the ribbing, gamely relating the time he wound up nude in a Japanese hotel lobby. His real bile, however, is reserved for right-wing crusaders and the mud-slinging they aimed at the Clintons throughout the president's two terms.
Loads of down-and-dirty political fun.Pub Date: Aug. 26, 2002
ISBN: 0-670-03111-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2002
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and...
A dense, absorbing investigation into the medical community's exploitation of a dying woman and her family's struggle to salvage truth and dignity decades later.
In a well-paced, vibrant narrative, Popular Science contributor and Culture Dish blogger Skloot (Creative Writing/Univ. of Memphis) demonstrates that for every human cell put under a microscope, a complex life story is inexorably attached, to which doctors, researchers and laboratories have often been woefully insensitive and unaccountable. In 1951, Henrietta Lacks, an African-American mother of five, was diagnosed with what proved to be a fatal form of cervical cancer. At Johns Hopkins, the doctors harvested cells from her cervix without her permission and distributed them to labs around the globe, where they were multiplied and used for a diverse array of treatments. Known as HeLa cells, they became one of the world's most ubiquitous sources for medical research of everything from hormones, steroids and vitamins to gene mapping, in vitro fertilization, even the polio vaccine—all without the knowledge, must less consent, of the Lacks family. Skloot spent a decade interviewing every relative of Lacks she could find, excavating difficult memories and long-simmering outrage that had lay dormant since their loved one's sorrowful demise. Equal parts intimate biography and brutal clinical reportage, Skloot's graceful narrative adeptly navigates the wrenching Lack family recollections and the sobering, overarching realities of poverty and pre–civil-rights racism. The author's style is matched by a methodical scientific rigor and manifest expertise in the field.
Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and Petri dish politics.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4000-5217-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
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