Former Reagan Administration assistant secretary of defense for international security Perle presents a policy-driven thriller- Ö-clef about State Department perfidy and the valiant, dedicated, selfless assistant secretary of defense for international security in the administration of a nameless but eerily familiar 3x5 card- flipping President who battles to save the nation from the aforementioned perfidy and from anyone in either hemisphere who would threaten the Strategic Defense Initiative. You thought the Soviets were mean and treacherous, but that's just because you don't know the real threat to peace, stability, and the balance of power—those oily, stupidly trusting, cynical WASPs who run the State Department. They're really bad. Beltway insiders are sure to be left gasping by the devastating portrait of Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Dan Bennet, a totally unprincipled Princetonian who uses his old college roommate, now a liberal Stanford professor, as a back-channel to the Soviets in order to undermine the hard-hitting, coldly realistic, and increasingly successful SDI-dependent foreign policy espoused by ultradedicated Assistant Secretary of Defense, talented amateur cook, and neglectful husband Michael Waterman. How lucky the President, the Secretary of Defense, and, well, the country are to have Waterman, who stays working late at the Pentagon night after night to craft a defense policy based on reason and fact rather than Liberal Sentiment. But Waterman is about to face his greatest battle. After dreaming up a stunningly simple but immensely powerful course of action to take in the area of intermediate-range European-based missiles, he realizes that all his wonderful work is about to go down the tubes, sabotaged by the hateful Assistant Secretary Bennet, who has his own plan to give the Soviets the nuclear candy-store just for the sake of a silly treaty. Bennet and Waterman go toe-to-toe as the President and the General Secretary do the summit thing.... All the breezy charm and subtle thrills of a Nixon memoir.
Pub Date: June 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-394-56552-5
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1992
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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