A lively, insightful account of FDR’s early years.
An account of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s (1882–1945) first few years in politics.
FDR began his career in the shadow of Theodore Roosevelt, America’s most famous politician. By TR’s death in 1919, FDR was a fairly prominent national figure and the 1920 Democratic candidate for vice president. This is where veteran historian Weintraub (Pearl Harbor Christmas: A World at War, December 1941, 2011, etc.) ends this perceptive demi-biography of FDR’s political maturation under the eyes of two other great presidents. Barely related to Theodore (Eleanor was his niece), Franklin cashed in on his famous name but also worked hard in 1910 to win an upset victory and enter New York State’s legislature nearly 30 years after his namesake. He became popular among New York Democrats, and his defiance of Tammany Hall to support Woodrow Wilson in 1912 earned him appointment as assistant secretary of the Navy. Like TR, appointed to the same office in 1897, FDR took advantage of an easygoing boss to run the department with a pugnacious advocacy of naval expansion that made him a beloved figure in the service until the end of his life. The book is largely an account of his activities during eight years as an energetic member of the Woodrow Wilson administration, during which he refined the skills and met the men (and a few women) who figured in his own presidency. Weintraub does not ignore an unhappy Eleanor, rarely at his side, harassed with caring for six children and several large households and already suspicious of his wandering eye. Her political career did not blossom until the children were grown and FDR was in a wheelchair.
A lively, insightful account of FDR’s early years.Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-306-82118-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Da Capo
Review Posted Online: July 28, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2013
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.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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