Largely airbrushed family portrait, with warts shown mainly on the face of a prejudiced society. (Two 16-page b&w photo...
A hefty, well-documented, glowing account of the Kennedys as prime examples of the Irish-Catholic experience in America.
For this five-generation history of the clan from the mid-19th century to the present day, Newsday journalist and biographer Maier (Newhouse, 1996, etc.) makes extensive use of patriarch Joseph P. Kennedy’s personal papers; interviews and correspondence with family and friends in both the US and Ireland round out the picture. Much of the saga is already familiar, but Maier takes particular interest in the Kennedys’ religious and ethnic background, how it influenced their thinking and their actions. He paints a vivid picture of the anti-Irish, anti-Catholic sentiment that faced immigrants with brogues, and he shows how the first American-born Kennedy, P.J., used his position as a tavern owner to become ward boss in his Irish immigrant community. The account becomes increasingly detailed as it shifts to P.J.’s son Joseph. Rather than focusing on how the patriarch became wealthy, Maier looks at how he used his wealth and power behind the scenes in the Catholic Church. Among Joseph’s children, the author is most interested in Jack’s use of his Irish-Catholic background early in his political career and his struggles against anti-Catholic bias in the 1960 presidential campaign. Maier also examines how JFK’s presidency affected perceptions of the Church by outsiders, and especially how his background shaped his positions on civil rights, immigration, and the war on communism. Later he looks at Robert’s appeal to other ethnic minorities, including Latinos and blacks, and to the efforts of Ted and Jean to bring peace to Northern Ireland. In the next generation, Maier finds that it is often the women (e.g., Caroline Kennedy and Kathleen Kennedy Townsend) who have assumed the role of “Irish chieftain,” those traditional clan leaders of old who inspired and led their people.
Largely airbrushed family portrait, with warts shown mainly on the face of a prejudiced society. (Two 16-page b&w photo inserts, not seen)Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2003
ISBN: 0-465-04317-8
Page Count: 600
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2003
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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