A slapdash effort, lacking in critical perspective and reading like a background report for an ``Albright for President'' campaign. Blood, a lobbyist and trustee of the Democratic National Committee, is so gushing about his subject that he may have unwittingly created a new phenomenon: damning with great praise. For example, after Albright's appointment as UN representative, it is claimed that she ``singlehandedly transformed her post from mere messenger to chief architect and articulator of American foreign policy.'' Chief architect? Given this heady position it might seem difficult to explain foreign policy failures without tarnishing Albright's image, but when Blood looks at the Somalia fiasco, there is an answer, for she was ``proactively excluded from the policy-making process.'' The hyperbole is actually cranked up another notch upon her ascent to secretary of state: Blood claims that Albright is the first person since John F. Kennedy to establish a personal connection between American foreign policy and the rest of the world, and that ``people flock to see [her] like a rock star.'' By the end of the book one expects Albright to don a costume with a large S on the chest and fly off to save the world. Refusing to mention anything that could be characterized as criticism and recognizing only superior personal qualities is ultimately a disservice to Albright, however. She probably is a fine person and an outstanding public servant, but we all know that when issues are serious and complex, no person or policy can always be right; painting inherently gray material strictly in black-and- white only serves to irritate readers and leave them wondering about Albright as well as the author. If Albright is nearly as upright and moral as the person portrayed in this volume, she will surely be embarrassed by it. (24 b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-312-17180-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1997
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
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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