Partly a biography of ``the most influential media baron of our time,'' more a critique of that baron's stewardship of the public interest, an ambitious assemblage that falls short of a strong narrative or full indictment. Newsday reporter Maier never received access to his little- known subject—S.I. ``Si'' Newhouse Jr., ruler of a chain of newspapers, of CondÇ Nast Publications (publisher of Vogue and Vanity Fair, among other magazines), and of the Random House book publishing empire—so his portrait is understandably sketchy. After tracing Newhouse's youthful unhappiness and professional meanderings, the author gets sidetracked with more interesting characters, such as Si's ``surrogate father,'' Alexander Liberman, longtime editorial director of CondÇ Nast. There, Newhouse blurred ``the distinction between editorial and advertising,'' Maier writes, sins later magnified at the reborn Vanity Fair and the newly acquired New Yorker. The narrative then turns to Si's friendship with the notorious Roy Cohn, who set in motion what seems to be Newhouse's most glaring ethical lapse: the Newhouse- owned Cleveland Plain Dealer succumbed to Mafia pressure to retract an investigative story on Teamster boss Jackie Presser. (Like most controversies in the book, this has been reported on in depth before.) Maier moves on to the complex tax maneuvering that saved oodles for Newhouse's Advance Publications, allowing him to acquire Random House in 1980. The author recounts how Newhouse's bottom- line mentality led to the controversial firings of veteran editors and sullied the company's reputation. Profiling editor Tina Brown (who agreed to interviews), he reveals that Si had planned to pull the plug on Brown's Vanity Fair until the famous Reagan cover turned the magazine's fortunes around. Si often drops out of the narrative when it veers into lengthy but not probing reports on the personalities and internal politics of Newhouse's empire, but Maier makes the worthy point that pundits have rarely examined the way ``the nation's largest private media company'' affects journalism and culture. In the public interest, surely. But will the public, outside the media world, be interested in this mediocre effort? (16 pages of photos, not seen) (First printing of 60,000)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-312-11481-8
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1994
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
An engrossing, intense, and highly descriptive narrative chronicling the ghastly conditions three pregnant women suffered...
The incredible true story of three Jewish women who survived the Holocaust.
Priska, Rachel, and Anka were married Jewish women in their early 20s when the Nazis took control of Europe. Like millions of other Jews, they were forced to give up their normal lives, all of their belongings, and their homes. Shuttled into ghettos and then off to one of the most notorious camps, Auschwitz II-Birkenau, they suffered through the Nazis’ increasing atrocities. But these three women all held a secret: they were pregnant. They were moved from Auschwitz and ended up in Mauthausen, another notorious death camp. With facing the most horrible conditions imaginable, all three gave birth right before the Allies accepted Germany’s surrender. In this meticulously detailed account, Holden (Haatchi & Little B: The Inspiring True Story of One Boy and His Dog, 2014, etc.) compiles an enormous amount of information from interviews, letters, historical records, and personal visits to the sites where this story unfolded. The graphic history places readers in the moment and provides a sense of the enduring power of love that Priska, Rachel, and Anka had for their unborn children and for the husbands they so desperately hoped to see after the war. Even though it occurred more than 70 years ago, the story’s truth is so chillingly portrayed that it seems as if it could have happened recently. These three women and their infants survived in the face of death, and, Holden writes, “their babies went on to have babies of their own and create a second and then a third generation, all of whom continue to live their lives in defiance of Hitler’s plan to erase them from history and from memory.”
An engrossing, intense, and highly descriptive narrative chronicling the ghastly conditions three pregnant women suffered through at the hands of the Nazis.Pub Date: May 5, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-237025-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2015
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