Although his monumental contribution to the national welfare is largely forgotten today, Jesse Jones (1874–1956) was widely considered to be one of the most powerful men in America—second only to FDR—during the years of the Great Depression and World War II.
Fenberg—an officer for the Houston Endowment and the producer and writer of the Emmy Award–winning documentary “Brother Can You Spare a Billion: The Story of Jesse H. Jones”—chronicles how Jones played a central role in the development of Houston into a major commercial and financial center, before moving to Washington D.C. to head the Reconstruction Finance Corporation and its many spinoff agencies. The author locates his work on the national scene within the broader context of what he views as the successes of the New Deal. As a leading Texas Democrat, Jones came to the attention of Woodrow Wilson and was given an important role in coordinating international-relief efforts along with Herbert Hoover. Upon assuming office, Roosevelt chose Jones to head the RFC, which rapidly morphed into a leading institution of the New Deal, with chief responsibility for getting the economy back on track. By 1934, Jones faced problems similar to issues today. Despite the massive infusion of capital into failing banks to increase their liquidity, credit to industry remained largely frozen. Jones then sought and received authority to make loans directly to credit-worthy businesses, both large and small, and began financing national infrastructure development. Jones warned against balancing the budget by cutting back on New Deal stimulus and relief efforts, and his views were borne out in the 1937 recession. During WWII, the RFC, under his direction, played a major role in the reconversion of American factories, the development of synthetics such as rubber and the maintenance of an international supply line where possible. A somewhat-forgotten page of U.S. history that holds enormous relevance today.
Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-60344-434-7
Page Count: 616
Publisher: Texas A&M Univ.
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2011
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
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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