Morris dishes the fascinating dirt on—and logs the remarkable accomplishments of—this controversial author, social climber, magazine editor, athlete, foreign correspondent, and trophy wife. Most people these days know Clare Boothe Luce as the author of the acid-tongued movie classic The Women, which made Jungle Red nail polish a synonym for social intrigue and betrayal. Morris (Edith Kermit Roosevelt, 1980), who had access to Luce in the last years of her life and to the letters, journals, and documents that Luce kept from her adolescence, blends the killer nail color with a more subtle palette in a complex portrait of an intelligent, ambitious, and multi-faceted woman who was also beautiful, charming, witty, and always elegantly turned out. However, there was no silver spoon in Clare's mouth when she was born in 1903, the illegitimate child of an upwardly striving young mother, who at some point in Luce's childhood probably earned a living as a call girl. That interfered with the quest of neither mother nor daughter for wealthy, well-connected partners. Clare's first husband was rich, social, alcoholic George Brokaw. After their divorce, she begged a job from magazine publisher CondÇ Nast. Within a few years she was managing editor of Vanity Fair, a playwright, essayist, and the object of Henry Luce's desire. Married to Luce, she went on to become a war correspondent, filing reports for the new Life magazine. The controversy surrounding her often obscured the fact that she was a talented writer and an astute, if sometimes venomous, reporter. Lap up Volume I, with its intimate and sometimes contradictary detail: Clare Boothe Luce, her Vionnet dresses fitted in Paris, as feminist icon. Watch for Volume II—Clare as congresswoman and US ambassador. (45 b&w photos, not seen) (First serial to Vanity Fair; Book-of-the-Month Club selection)
Pub Date: June 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-394-57555-5
Page Count: 560
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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