ROBERT E. LEE

Name: ROBERT E. LEE
Author: Roy Blount
ISBN: 0-670-03220-4

by Roy Blount ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 12, 2003

Not the most powerful of explanations. But there’s been worse, and stranger, and Blount’s version will be of value to...

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Southern humorist Blount (Be Sweet, 1998, etc.) turns somber in this portrait of the troubled, tragic Confederate general.

Not that Robert E. Lee didn’t have a sense of humor, Blount writes by way of opening this brief but worthy biography. “He had tiny feet that he loved his children to tickle,” he told funny but generally clean stories around the bivouac fire, and he was highly regarded, as fellow soldier Joseph Johnston recalled, “as the only one of all the men I have known that could laugh at the faults and follies of his friends in such a manner as to make them ashamed without touching their affection for him, and to confirm their respect and sense of his superiority.” But Lee was also careworn and depressive, the scion of an aristocratic family that had fallen on hard times, and he was so absorbed by worries about personal honor that he missed out on much of the fun of life, instead preferring to pay meticulous attention to his studies at West Point, his comportment, and his personal appearance, widely lauded in his day as a model of manly beauty. As a general, Lee was hailed as well for his attention to his men’s well-being, though Blount does turn up a report or two complaining about his Virginia army’s lack of discipline when it wasn’t busily shooting at Yankees. Blount honors Lee without slipping into hagiography, a problem in much of the available literature—for, as he notes, most of the historiography devoted to the Civil War is the product of southerners who have accorded Lee demi-divine status. Even so, he lets Lee off rather lightly for some noteworthy errors, including the charge at Gettysburg that cost George Pickett half his division, which he explains thus: “When the usually repressed Lee felt an overpowering need for emotional release, and had an army at his disposal and another one in front of him, he couldn’t hold back.”

Not the most powerful of explanations. But there’s been worse, and stranger, and Blount’s version will be of value to students of the Civil War all the same.

Pub Date: May 12, 2003

ISBN: 0-670-03220-4

Page Count: 224

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2003

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | HISTORICAL & MILITARY

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BE SWEET
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by Roy Blount

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

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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

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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BLACK BOY

A RECORD OF CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH

by Richard Wright ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 28, 1945

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This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.

It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.

Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.