The British author of Enemies of Society (1977), a diatribe against Freudianism and Marxism, has cast his likes and dislikes in a historical narrative. He is partial to Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge, whose public philosophy appeared to possess a degree of concordance with the actual facts of life which was rare in human experience—in this case, laissez faire combined with enrichissez vous. On the other hand: Marx's invention of the 'bourgeoisie' was the most comprehensive of. . . hate-theories and it has continued to provide a foundation for all paranoid revolutionary movements, whether fascist-nationalist or Communist-internationalist. Modern theoretical anti-Semitism was a derivative of Marxism. This comes in a chapter on the rise of Hitler. Another egregious utterance is the offhand comment, in a discussion of early-1930s Cambridge, that Lytton Strachey confided to Keynes, with whom he was already competing for the affections of handsome young men. Since the topic is the importance of friendship to this group, and the paragraph ends with E. M. Forster's famous line about choosing friendship over patriotism, Johnson has managed to feed the can't trust a homosexual school of public policy along with his more deep-seated prejudices (which he groups under the heading of moral relativism). The result is that all of Johnson's historical judgments are suspect. He muddies things by claiming that the Left was the first political grouping in Spain to resort to violence in what became the Spanish Civil War (the violence being strikes), and points out that the Popular Front received less than 50 percent of the vote in 1936, making it less than completely legitimate. On Vietnam, he argues that the United States shouldn't have gotten so involved, but then should have occupied the North (how?). The 20th century as a whole is to Johnson one long and unsuccessful attempt at social engineering from which he would like to retreat. Cankerous.
Pub Date: June 1, 1983
ISBN: 0060922834
Page Count: 870
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: Oct. 11, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1983
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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
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