by Richard Aldous ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 10, 2017
A solid, well-researched life of one of America’s “finest narrative historians.”
An admiring portrait of a historian who made history.
When he was 28, Arthur Schlesinger Jr. (1917-2007) won a Pulitzer Prize for his first book, The Age of Jackson, an intellectual history of Jacksonian democracy set in a sweeping social, economic, and cultural context. Selling an astonishing 90,000 copies in its first year, it was acclaimed by many historians as “the most influential book of the postwar era” and marked the beginning of Schlesinger’s illustrious career as a writer, professor, prominent liberal intellectual, and, most notably, presidential adviser to John F. Kennedy. Aldous (History/Bard Coll.; Tony Ryan: Ireland’s Aviator, 2013, etc.) draws on Schlesinger’s prolific publications, letters, and diaries, as well as interviews with family members and colleagues, to produce a well-paced, lively biography of a controversial figure. He was a brilliant man derided as “a court historian” for his golden portrayal of the Kennedys as well as an eyewitness to history who held firmly to the “Progressive notion that historical inquiry might promote liberal reform.” A sharp analyst and outspoken adviser, Schlesinger “was both a small ‘d’ democrat and a snob; his clever, ironic personality could also be waspish and peevish.” The son of a historian and Harvard professor, he deferred a career in academia to go to Washington to write for Fortune magazine. There, he socialized with the Georgetown set: Joseph and Stewart Alsop, Philip Graham, Averell Harriman, Clark Clifford, and other influential men. A supporter of Adlai Stevenson, Schlesinger defected to Kennedy, although he questioned the president’s commitment to liberalism. When Kennedy invited Schlesinger to join the White House staff, both men saw the advantage: as “in-house liberal” and “intellectual gadfly,” Schlesinger gained a privileged position as witness, participant, and chronicler; Kennedy saw Schlesinger as a historian-in-residence who would shape and burnish his legacy. He performed that task admirably in A Thousand Days (1964). By the 1990s, identity politics and attention to diversity left his historical stance open to criticism.
A solid, well-researched life of one of America’s “finest narrative historians.”Pub Date: Oct. 10, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-393-24470-0
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: June 13, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2017
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by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 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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by Jon Krakauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1996
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
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