A patent paean to a beloved grandfather and his military, political, and family achievements.
A granddaughter of the 34th president celebrates his life and accomplishments.
The author, who published a memoir, Mrs. Ike (1996), about her grandmother, turns her attention to her grandfather in this mix of biography, memoir, and history; she has few negative things to say about him other than the fact that he did not like phone calls but rather “far preferred to meet his colleagues in person.” Instead, she celebrates his remarkable life, noting his humility and “intellectual honesty” and how he was “transparent and accountable” to the public and possessed a “determination to put the country first.” The author is clearly determined to remind readers of his many accomplishments—not only in World War II (he organized D-Day, among many other operations), but during the eight years of his presidency (1953-1961). She credits him for laying the groundwork for civil rights—e.g., he sent the 101st Airborne to Little Rock to facilitate school integration—balancing budgets, keeping us out of war, working hard to get the U.S. into space, refusing to attack his critics in public, and declining to diminish himself by responding to Sen. Joseph McCarthy and, later, to the Democrats (JFK among them) who tried to use the early Soviet space achievements for a political advantage. She shows him as an empathetic family man with a strong moral compass. In the epilogue, the author attacks the tribalism poisoning our current political climate. “Our culture no longer understands what was deeply ingrained in Eisenhower and many of his generation,” she writes. “Today we seem to think that strength is derived from winning every small fight, while raising ourselves up for recognition and advancement, even if others have to be diminished in the process….To [him] the exact opposite was fundamental to his beliefs.”
A patent paean to a beloved grandfather and his military, political, and family achievements. (17 b/w photos)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-23877-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: March 21, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The heartbreaking story of an emotionally battered child delivered with captivating candor and grace.
The former iCarly star reflects on her difficult childhood.
In her debut memoir, titled after her 2020 one-woman show, singer and actor McCurdy (b. 1992) reveals the raw details of what she describes as years of emotional abuse at the hands of her demanding, emotionally unstable stage mom, Debra. Born in Los Angeles, the author, along with three older brothers, grew up in a home controlled by her mother. When McCurdy was 3, her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. Though she initially survived, the disease’s recurrence would ultimately take her life when the author was 21. McCurdy candidly reconstructs those in-between years, showing how “my mom emotionally, mentally, and physically abused me in ways that will forever impact me.” Insistent on molding her only daughter into “Mommy’s little actress,” Debra shuffled her to auditions beginning at age 6. As she matured and starting booking acting gigs, McCurdy remained “desperate to impress Mom,” while Debra became increasingly obsessive about her daughter’s physical appearance. She tinted her daughter’s eyelashes, whitened her teeth, enforced a tightly monitored regimen of “calorie restriction,” and performed regular genital exams on her as a teenager. Eventually, the author grew understandably resentful and tried to distance herself from her mother. As a young celebrity, however, McCurdy became vulnerable to eating disorders, alcohol addiction, self-loathing, and unstable relationships. Throughout the book, she honestly portrays Debra’s cruel perfectionist personality and abusive behavior patterns, showing a woman who could get enraged by everything from crooked eyeliner to spilled milk. At the same time, McCurdy exhibits compassion for her deeply flawed mother. Late in the book, she shares a crushing secret her father revealed to her as an adult. While McCurdy didn’t emerge from her childhood unscathed, she’s managed to spin her harrowing experience into a sold-out stage act and achieve a form of catharsis that puts her mind, body, and acting career at peace.
The heartbreaking story of an emotionally battered child delivered with captivating candor and grace.Pub Date: Aug. 9, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-982185-82-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2022
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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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