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WASHINGTON’S GENERAL

Name: WASHINGTON’S GENERAL
Author: Terry Golway
ISBN: 0-8050-7066-4

NATHANAEL GREENE AND THE TRIUMPH OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

by Terry Golway ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 10, 2005

A fitting and welcome monument to a surprisingly complex actor in early American history.

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New York Observer columnist and editor Golway (For the Cause of Liberty, 2000, etc.) rescues a Revolutionary War hero from oblivion, and deservedly so.

Nathanael Greene was a Rhode Islander who mysteriously earned a promotion from private to general of militia almost overnight, and who otherwise embodied a bundle of contradictions: he was a nominal pacifist who excelled at warfare, a pious man who was fond of a visit to the alehouse, “a walking incongruity: a self-taught child of the Enlightenment, dressed in the unadorned black garb of a Quaker.” When textbooks mention him at all, they tend to cast Greene in a saintly light, whereas Golway accords him all the usual human failings. Among other things, the man wasn’t above politics; he grumbled about George Washington’s failings as a commander and lobbied hard for position, especially against rival general Horatio Gates, though he skillfully depicted himself as being the unwilling recipient of rank and honor. And he was also, Golway hints, not above earning a dollar here and there by helping mercantile relatives gain access to lucrative army contracts. Greene also had positive qualities, however, that more than matched his shortcomings, one being sheer bravery; he uncomplainingly turned up in the thick of important battles, such as the Continental victory at Trenton and defeat at Germantown, and at the end of the war his mere appearance on the battlefield, apparently, was enough to send his British foes into flight. Greene had a simple view of the war: “We fight, get beat, rise and fight again.” That persistence wore down royal forces in the South, with the last battles of the Revolutionary War. At places like Cowpens, the Dan River, Guilford Courthouse, and Eutaw Springs, Greene met everything the British threw at him, and if he lost many battles, he at least kept up a fight that would have been all too easy to abandon.

A fitting and welcome monument to a surprisingly complex actor in early American history.

Pub Date: Jan. 10, 2005

ISBN: 0-8050-7066-4

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Henry Holt

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2004

Categories:

- BOOK REVIEW
I NEVER DID LIKE POLITICS
by Terry Golway

- BOOK REVIEW
FRANK AND AL
by Terry Golway

- BOOK REVIEW
MACHINE MADE
by Terry Golway

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

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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

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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INTO THE WILD

by Jon Krakauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1996

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...

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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.

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor will it to readers of Krakauer's narrative. (4 maps) (First printing of 35,000; author tour)