Brookhiser elegantly undermines his subjects even as he sympathetically records their importance as a crucial link between...
A concise history of four famous men from the house of Adams.
John (1735–1826), John Quincy (1767–1848), Charles Francis (1807–86), and Henry (1838–1918) were a prickly bunch who always maintained their sense of self-importance, even after they failed to realize their goals and the family started its long slump into obscurity. Their other shared trait, after all, was contrariness. John was in favor of a kingly presidency, but he despaired of George Washington’s regal air even as he sought but failed to acquire it. Historian and journalist Brookhiser (Alexander Hamilton, American, 1999, etc.) calls John the first loser in American presidential history, alienating so many during his single term that he couldn’t get re-elected. John Quincy was a strident enemy of slavery not because he wanted to free slaves but because he believed that their masters wanted to lord it over free men as well. Charles Francis despised partisanship, yet he would have gotten nowhere if he hadn’t hooked up with William Seward, who as Secretary of State made him ambassador to England. And Henry, who found post–Civil War politics vulgar, nonetheless moved to Washington and became a political journalist. Brookhiser, an admirer of WASP culture, is fascinated by the Adamses’ tendency to play out in the public arena exploits that were really directed toward family members. John wanted to impress Samuel Adams. John Quincy had to impress his father. The work Charles Francis most appreciated was the editing of his father’s diaries. And Henry could breathe a sigh of relief only after he wrote “Mont Saint Michel and Chartres” as a testament to his family’s genius. One wishes that the female members of the tribe had received some attention here. They must have been impressive characters, or no Adams would have married them in the first place.
Brookhiser elegantly undermines his subjects even as he sympathetically records their importance as a crucial link between Americans of several generations and their national past.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-684-86881-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Free Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2001
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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