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JOHN BIRCH

Name: JOHN BIRCH
Author: Terry Lautz
ISBN: 978-0-19-026289-1

A LIFE

by Terry Lautz ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 4, 2016

A useful work that elucidates both the U.S. role in China and some elements of the contemporary conservative mindset.

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A serious probe into the life of the Baptist missionary to China who posthumously (and thus unwittingly) served as the right wing’s poster child.

Who was the real John Birch (1918-1945)? Academic Lautz, who grew up in Taiwan and later became a scholar of Asia, was curious enough to delve deeply into the brief life of this young missionary and U.S. intelligence officer who was killed by the Chinese communists at the age of 27. The author situates Birch—who made his way to China in 1940 at the behest of a charismatic preacher to take up the work of training Chinese children to become Christian—squarely in the center of the political tensions between U.S.–backed Nationalists and Mao Zedong’s Communists, both battling the Japanese invaders. Although Birch, brought up by a strong-willed mother and failed missionary father, only desired to be a simple fundamentalist preacher saving souls in rural China, he volunteered for the U.S. military in 1942 and was put to work in gathering intelligence for the Office of Strategic Services, which eventually led to his untimely death. Lautz also explores the co-opting of Birch’s life by conspiracy-minded conservatives like Republican California Sen. William F. Knowland, who believed the “loss of China” would spell a communist conquest of the whole region and first mentioned the young man’s name in a speech in Congress in September 1950 as “the first casualty of World War III.” Subsequently, Birch’s name would become synonymous as a martyr to the Cold War, ardently endorsed by his mother. His life was appropriated by businessman Robert Welch, who broadcast the myths about him and started the John Birch Society in 1958 (“less government, more responsibility, and a better world”). Lautz sorts the real story from the “lunatic fringe.”

A useful work that elucidates both the U.S. role in China and some elements of the contemporary conservative mindset.

Pub Date: Jan. 4, 2016

ISBN: 978-0-19-026289-1

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Oxford Univ.

Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2015

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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)