An absorbing account of the life of W. Averill Harriman, one of that remarkable group of ``wise men'' whose lives were so closely linked to the foreign policy of the postwar US as it emerged to world power; by a Washington correspondent for the Los Angeles Times. Harriman was the son of Edward Henry Harriman, one of the great railroad pioneers—some say robber barons—of the Victorian era. For much of his life, he lived in the shadow of his father, and—though Abramson does not say so directly—his efforts as international banker, railroad executive, early pioneer of aviation, and assembler of America's largest merchant fleet hardly showed the remarkable prescience that characterized his father's reign; moreover, in the Soviet Union during the 1920's and early 30's, Harriman was taken for a ride in business dealings. It may have been his lack of financial acumen that drove him into politics; in any case, FDR found this former Republican a useful weapon against the outraged financial community. Harriman's most glorious days came during WW II, initially as Lend Lease administrator in London, where he worked closely with Churchill to bring the US into the war. Later, this taciturn, often inarticulate man served as ambassador to Moscow and, in the 1950's, as a one- term governor of New York. In the 1960's, Harriman negotiated the neutralization of Laos and headed the American delegation seeking peace with North Vietnam. Abramson deals frankly with Harriman's contributions; his stinginess; his years as a playboy and his adulterous affair with Pamela Churchill, whom he later married; and his sycophantic, even groveling attempts to curry favor with successive Presidents and to secure interesting diplomatic and other assignments. An unusual perspective that conveys an impression sometimes closer to the court intrigues of the past than to the supposedly more rational politics of the present. (Sixteen pages of b&w photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: July 17, 1992
ISBN: 0-688-04352-6
Page Count: 768
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1992
Categories: GENERAL NONFICTION
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Possibly inspired by the letters Cleary has received as a children's author, this begins with second-grader Leigh Botts' misspelled fan letter to Mr. Henshaw, whose fictitious book itself derives from the old take-off title Forty Ways W. Amuse a Dog. Soon Leigh is in sixth grade and bombarding his still-favorite author with a list of questions to be answered and returned by "next Friday," the day his author report is due. Leigh is disgruntled when Mr. Henshaw's answer comes late, and accompanied by a set of questions for Leigh to answer. He threatens not to, but as "Mom keeps nagging me about your dumb old questions" he finally gets the job done—and through his answers Mr. Henshaw and readers learn that Leigh considers himself "the mediumest boy in school," that his parents have split up, and that he dreams of his truck-driver dad driving him to school "hauling a forty-foot reefer, which would make his outfit add up to eighteen wheels altogether. . . . I guess I wouldn't seem so medium then." Soon Mr. Henshaw recommends keeping a diary (at least partly to get Leigh off his own back) and so the real letters to Mr. Henshaw taper off, with "pretend," unmailed letters (the diary) taking over. . . until Leigh can write "I don't have to pretend to write to Mr. Henshaw anymore. I have learned to say what I think on a piece of paper." Meanwhile Mr. Henshaw offers writing tips, and Leigh, struggling with a story for a school contest, concludes "I think you're right. Maybe I am not ready to write a story." Instead he writes a "true story" about a truck haul with his father in Leigh's real past, and this wins praise from "a real live author" Leigh meets through the school program. Mr. Henshaw has also advised that "a character in a story should solve a problem or change in some way," a standard juvenile-fiction dictum which Cleary herself applies modestly by having Leigh solve his disappearing lunch problem with a burglar-alarmed lunch box—and, more seriously, come to recognize and accept that his father can't be counted on. All of this, in Leigh's simple words, is capably and unobtrusively structured as well as valid and realistic. From the writing tips to the divorced-kid blues, however, it tends to substitute prevailing wisdom for the little jolts of recognition that made the Ramona books so rewarding.
Pub Date: Aug. 22, 1983
ISBN: 143511096X
Page Count: 133
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Oct. 16, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1983
Categories: GENERAL NONFICTION
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Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
Categories: GENERAL NONFICTION
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