Amid the stream of JFK books to be released for the centennial, this work should emerge as one of the most complete and...
Smith (Sloan School of Management/MIT), John F. Kennedy’s nephew, and Brinkley (History/Rice Univ.; Rightful Heritage: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Land of America, 2016, etc.) assemble a large collection of material by and about the late president.
Coinciding with the centennial of JFK’s birth, May 29, this volume presents speeches and accompanying commentaries from a wide range of public figures. The book is organized chronologically, briefly covering JFK’s early years, the senatorial period, 1960 presidential campaign, each of the three years in the White House, and finally his legacy. The famous speeches are included: the inaugural address, the televised update on the Cuban missile crisis, the vision for space exploration set forth at Rice University, the Ich bin ein Berliner speech, and the civil rights report of 1963. Less-well-known speeches also are here, including JFK’s address to the New York Liberal Party, entitled “Definition of a Liberal,” and the role of the artist in American society, delivered at Amherst College shortly before his death. The speeches are well-written, often elegant. They usually exuded optimism and provided a tutorial on the issues and offered solutions on the most important national challenges. Many are as timely today as they were more than a half-century ago. Enhancing these primary sources are analyses from such diverse analysts as presidential historians Robert Dallek and Michael Beschloss, politicians Elizabeth Warren and John McCain, and entertainers Dick Cavett and Robert Redford. The book is an unabashed celebration of JFK, but the speeches stand alone, and the commentary is insightful. The editors have assembled hundreds of complementary photos, most of them uncommon, enhancing the overall presentation, and the book is packed with other notable contributors, including George Packer, Norman Mailer, Dave Eggers, Joseph Ellis, Samantha Power, and Gloria Steinem.
Amid the stream of JFK books to be released for the centennial, this work should emerge as one of the most complete and useful.Pub Date: May 2, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-06-266884-4
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 6, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2017
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
SEEN & HEARD
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
