A fine political biography that does not entirely rehabilitate its subject.
Biography of a politician whose name “has become synonymous with corruption and graft during the Civil War.”
Historians agree that Abraham Lincoln chose his Cabinet well, and they also agree on the single exception: Simon Cameron (1799-1889), the Pennsylvania political boss appointed secretary of war but dismissed after a year for incompetence and corruption. Not so fast, writes Kahan (History/Ohlone Coll.; The Bank War: Andrew Jackson, Nicholas Biddle, and the Fight for American Finance, 2015, etc.) in this lively re-evaluation of a skillful politician who rose from poverty to prominence in his 20s and remained for 50 years. A candidate for the 1860 Republican nomination, Cameron threw support to Lincoln when offered a Cabinet position. However, writes the author, “as a backslapping, glad-handing politician, he was used to charming legislators…but…was totally unable to switch gears into being an administrator.” Although Cameron worked hard, if inefficiently, Kahan admits that he favored his home state. He hired cronies, punished enemies, and directed lucrative contracts to supporters—though the author notes that other Cabinet members and the president did the same. Never on friendly terms, Lincoln disliked Cameron’s pressure to free slaves and recruit blacks into the army, a position the president later adopted. Almost everyone except his coterie cheered when the president shunted him off as ambassador to Russia; he returned after a few months to continue for another 15 years as a powerful player in Pennsylvania and national politics. Kahan’s Cameron is a likable career political boss devoted to supporting Pennsylvania business interests and winning elections. This required attracting and enriching loyal followers and, inevitably, enriching himself using tactics that 19th-century politicians took for granted. His plentiful enemies did not occupy a higher moral ground, but their attacks were not always misplaced.
A fine political biography that does not entirely rehabilitate its subject.Pub Date: July 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-61234-814-8
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Potomac Books
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
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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