A colleague once praised Sorensen’s ability to “use words that everybody can understand—intellectuals, milkmen, diplomats,...
The legendary Kennedy adviser reflects on his own remarkable life.
In 1965 Theodore C. Sorensen authored Kennedy. Now approaching 80, nearly 50 years removed from the job for which he remains best known, John F. Kennedy’s Special Counsel and indispensable wordsmith revisits much of the same territory, this time as “Ted,” a tip-off to this book’s more relaxed tone and focus on his own contributions to JFK’s career. Comparable historically to Colonel House, Harry Hopkins and Karl Rove, the man JFK referred to as “his intellectual blood bank” tells marvelous stories about first going to work for the Massachusetts senator, the writing of JFK’s Pulitzer Prize–winning Profiles in Courage, traveling the country for the 1960 campaign, the first televised presidential debates, the Cuban missile crisis, the triumphal visit to Berlin and, of course, crafting many memorable speeches for candidate and President Kennedy. Although he’s more forthcoming than ever about these and other more delicate topics—including Kennedy’s philandering, the senator’s timid response to the McCarthy censure and the president’s assassination—the author’s deep respect for and heartache at the loss of his mentor clearly abides. Sorensen (Why I Am a Democrat, 1996, etc.) also makes room for stories about his career as an international lawyer, his failed senate bid in 1970, the fiasco surrounding his withdrawn 1977 nomination for Director of Central Intelligence and his continuing role as adviser to the Kennedy family. He expresses regret about the toll his high-powered life took on two failed marriages, and about his own youthful aloofness and arrogance. He also pauses to settle some minor scores with the likes of Kenneth O’Donnell, Richard Goodwin, Joe Biden and Jimmy Carter. Notwithstanding the great events and the famous people that crowd this narrative, the most charming and heartfelt passages concern the author’s early life in Nebraska, as he traces the roots of his family and his still unabashed liberalism.
A colleague once praised Sorensen’s ability to “use words that everybody can understand—intellectuals, milkmen, diplomats, politicians.” The author does just that in this absorbing memoir.Pub Date: May 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-06-079871-0
Page Count: 576
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2008
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
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
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