by Susan McDougal with Pat Harris ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 20, 2003
Even with her memory gaps, no reader will feel McDougal got what she deserved, or that the grand-jury process can be...
The trials of Whitewater defendant McDougal, a sorry case who isn’t afraid to admit it but never deserved the treatment dished out by Kenneth Starr’s janissaries.
Nothing ever came of Whitewater, that distressing example of politically partisan venality, except the 18-month incarceration of McDougal, who refused to testify before the Office of the Independent Counsel. Here she endeavors to put her role in Whitewater—if so minor a part in such a non-event can be called a role—within the context of her life. This includes being the wife of Jim McDougal, a manic-depressive whose delusions included paranoia and a taste for grandiosity; and it also includes her tendency to “surrender control to stronger personalities,” namely to Jim but also to Nancy Mehta, wife of Zubin Mehta, portrayed here as a scary eccentric who accused McDougal of credit card fraud. McDougal’s version of things is buoyed by her acquittal of any charges beyond refusing to recognize the legitimacy of the Starr grand jury. She freely admits not just to incompetence but to a measure of reckless disregard concerning her own financial matters, as well as to a weakness for histrionics. But her tale is also salted with comments like “To this day I still don’t know the answer to that question” (why a single loan broke the bank she and her husband started) or “To this day, I have no idea what that check was for” (a check to Bill Clinton with the memo “Payoff Clinton”), which is hard not to regard as convenient ignorance. Most forcefully presented are her reasons for refusing to testify: the twisting of her words that could easily result in perjury, the overdue need to assert some control over her life, and her contempt for Starr’s motivations.
Even with her memory gaps, no reader will feel McDougal got what she deserved, or that the grand-jury process can be anything less than the rotten apple in the legal barrel.Pub Date: Jan. 20, 2003
ISBN: 0-7867-1128-0
Page Count: 400
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2002
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by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
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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by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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