Recollections of Churchill, de Gaulle, Khrushchev, et al. recycled from RN – plus biographical material from the public domain and a few thoughts on leadership by which Nixon identifies himself with his subjects. The great political leader must be willing “to risk all to gain all”; to endure opprobrium; to spend years “in the wilderness.” (In all these respects, see also Adenauer.) Two of the lesser lights in Nixon’s pantheon – Japan’s Yoshida, Italy’s de Gasperi – resisted radicalism; two – Australia’s Menzies, Singapore’s Lee – were champions of free enterprise who made their countries rich. (“The pursuit of affluence is much ridiculed by those who have never known the absence of it.”) Other cross-comparisons, endemic throughout, are simply extensions of Nixon’s hackneyed characterizations or his connect-the-dot grasp of history: “If David Ben-Gurion was an elemental force of history, Golda Meir was an elemental force of nature.” “Like Ghana’s Nkrumah, Indonesia’s Sukarno proved a disaster once independence was secured. Both could destroy; neither could build.” Furthermore: Chou was charming, Mao earthy; Chiang orderly, Mao slovenly. And Mao, “like most revolutionary leaders, could destroy but could not build.” Much of the book, however, consists of stock biographical data, stock anecdotes, or stock quotes. Even Nixon’s ostentatious dissents from the common view are pat: de Gaulle’s reputed arrogance notwithstanding, “I found him to be a very kind man…I would say he was almost gentle”; “in spite of [Adenauer’s] outward austerity…he was a warm, good-humored, gentle man.” The close-Nixon-watcher might indeed find his admiration for de Gaulle and Adenauer of some interest. (Both are lauded as family men; both befriended him when he was out of office.) But for a self-proclaimed avid reader of history (another attribute of leadership), he is remarkably unaware that others have heard his story of the “kitchen debate” with Khrushchev before, or also know that Churchill and de Gaulle were “voices in the wilderness” in the Thirties. And it would be beyond his ken that some might not equate his defeat for the California governorship with their warnings against the Nazi rise. Pretty tiresome, even for the sympathetically-inclined.
Pub Date: Oct. 25, 1982
ISBN: 0446512494
Page Count: 424
Publisher: Warner UK/Trafalgar
Review Posted Online: May 22, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1982
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.
Rootin’-tootin’ history of the dry-gulchers, horn-swogglers, and outright killers who populated the Wild West’s wildest city in the late 19th century.
The stories of Wyatt Earp and company, the shootout at the O.K. Corral, and Geronimo and the Apache Wars are all well known. Clavin, who has written books on Dodge City and Wild Bill Hickok, delivers a solid narrative that usefully links significant events—making allies of white enemies, for instance, in facing down the Apache threat, rustling from Mexico, and other ethnically charged circumstances. The author is a touch revisionist, in the modern fashion, in noting that the Earps and Clantons weren’t as bloodthirsty as popular culture has made them out to be. For example, Wyatt and Bat Masterson “took the ‘peace’ in peace officer literally and knew that the way to tame the notorious town was not to outkill the bad guys but to intimidate them, sometimes with the help of a gun barrel to the skull.” Indeed, while some of the Clantons and some of the Earps died violently, most—Wyatt, Bat, Doc Holliday—died of cancer and other ailments, if only a few of old age. Clavin complicates the story by reminding readers that the Earps weren’t really the law in Tombstone and sometimes fell on the other side of the line and that the ordinary citizens of Tombstone and other famed Western venues valued order and peace and weren’t particularly keen on gunfighters and their mischief. Still, updating the old notion that the Earp myth is the American Iliad, the author is at his best when he delineates those fraught spasms of violence. “It is never a good sign for law-abiding citizens,” he writes at one high point, “to see Johnny Ringo rush into town, both him and his horse all in a lather.” Indeed not, even if Ringo wound up killing himself and law-abiding Tombstone faded into obscurity when the silver played out.
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21458-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
The book begins in Sri Lanka with the tsunami of 2004—a horror the author saw firsthand, and the aftermath of which he...
The latest from French writer/filmmaker Carrère (My Life as a Russian Novel, 2010, etc.) is an awkward but intermittently touching hybrid of novel and autobiography.
The book begins in Sri Lanka with the tsunami of 2004—a horror the author saw firsthand, and the aftermath of which he describes powerfully. Carrère and his partner, Hélène, then return to Paris—and do so with a mutual devotion that's been renewed and deepened by all they've witnessed. Back in France, Hélène's sister Juliette, a magistrate and mother of three small daughters, has suffered a recurrence of the cancer that crippled her in adolescence. After her death, Carrère decides to write an oblique tribute and an investigation into the ravages of grief. He focuses first on Juliette's colleague and intimate friend Étienne, himself an amputee and survivor of childhood cancer, and a man in whose talkativeness and strength Carrère sees parallels to himself ("He liked to talk about himself. It's my way, he said, of talking to and about others, and he remarked astutely that it was my way, too”). Étienne is a perceptive, dignified person and a loyal, loving friend, and Carrère's portrait of him—including an unexpectedly fascinating foray into Étienne and Juliette's chief professional accomplishment, which was to tap the new European courts for help in overturning longtime French precedents that advantaged credit-card companies over small borrowers—is impressive. Less successful is Carrère's account of Juliette's widower, Patrice, an unworldly cartoonist whom he admires for his fortitude but seems to consider something of a simpleton. Now and again, especially in the Étienne sections, Carrère's meditations pay off in fresh, pungent insights, and his account of Juliette's last days and of the aftermath (especially for her daughters) is quietly harrowing.Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-8050-9261-5
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Metropolitan/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Aug. 10, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2011
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