A must-have in the libraries of those who love this period and/or admire these two iconic historical figures.
An examination of the strong bonds and rewarding exchanges between the Marquis de Lafayette and Thomas Jefferson.
Their friendship was primarily based on correspondence, beginning in 1781. Chaffin (Giant’s Causeway: Frederick Douglass’s Irish Odyssey and the Making of an American Visionary, 2014, etc.) capably traces their parallel stories, presenting a wealth of information, personal and historical, not often included in biographies. Stories of Jefferson’s governorship of Virginia, which represented the extent of his Revolutionary War activity after the Declaration of Independence, shows a man wholeheartedly devoted to Virginia. As the author clearly shows, Jefferson had little interest in military matters and generally stayed aloof from the war. Because he was unsure of what a 19-year-old Lafayette could bring to the table, George Washington accepted his offer to serve with great reservations. What Lafayette did have was enormous wealth, royal connections, and, in 1777, a ship loaded with men and materiel. He was determined to emulate his father, who died in the Seven Years’ War, and become a great general. Furthermore, the American fight was a chance for Lafayette—and France—to get revenge for their horrible loss to England in that war. It was not until 1779 that France actually entered the war, bringing the fleet and support that turned the tide of the Revolution. Lafayette welcomed Jefferson’s term in France as minister and (unofficial) consultant to Lafayette and his supporters. At the same time, he opened doors for Jefferson and helped him learn the ways of diplomacy. Lafayette’s strength was in taking a middle road, protecting the king while aiming for something between the U.S. Constitution and Britain’s arrangement by which the monarch and subject united into a single polity. Sifting through mountains of research material in both the U.S. and France, Chaffin has emerged with a text packed with facts and insights into both men as well as the tumultuous times in which they lived.
A must-have in the libraries of those who love this period and/or admire these two iconic historical figures.Pub Date: Nov. 26, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-11372-6
Page Count: 528
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
Doyle offers another lucid, inspiring chronicle of female empowerment and the rewards of self-awareness and renewal.
More life reflections from the bestselling author on themes of societal captivity and the catharsis of personal freedom.
In her third book, Doyle (Love Warrior, 2016, etc.) begins with a life-changing event. “Four years ago,” she writes, “married to the father of my three children, I fell in love with a woman.” That woman, Abby Wambach, would become her wife. Emblematically arranged into three sections—“Caged,” “Keys,” “Freedom”—the narrative offers, among other elements, vignettes about the soulful author’s girlhood, when she was bulimic and felt like a zoo animal, a “caged girl made for wide-open skies.” She followed the path that seemed right and appropriate based on her Catholic upbringing and adolescent conditioning. After a downward spiral into “drinking, drugging, and purging,” Doyle found sobriety and the authentic self she’d been suppressing. Still, there was trouble: Straining an already troubled marriage was her husband’s infidelity, which eventually led to life-altering choices and the discovery of a love she’d never experienced before. Throughout the book, Doyle remains open and candid, whether she’s admitting to rigging a high school homecoming court election or denouncing the doting perfectionism of “cream cheese parenting,” which is about “giving your children the best of everything.” The author’s fears and concerns are often mirrored by real-world issues: gender roles and bias, white privilege, racism, and religion-fueled homophobia and hypocrisy. Some stories merely skim the surface of larger issues, but Doyle revisits them in later sections and digs deeper, using friends and familial references to personify their impact on her life, both past and present. Shorter pieces, some only a page in length, manage to effectively translate an emotional gut punch, as when Doyle’s therapist called her blooming extramarital lesbian love a “dangerous distraction.” Ultimately, the narrative is an in-depth look at a courageous woman eager to share the wealth of her experiences by embracing vulnerability and reclaiming her inner strength and resiliency.
Doyle offers another lucid, inspiring chronicle of female empowerment and the rewards of self-awareness and renewal.Pub Date: March 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-0125-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
PROFILES
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
A boon for admirers of Oz’s work and contemporary Israeli literature in general.
A moving, emotionally charged memoir of the renowned author’s youth in a newly created Israel.
“Almost everyone in Jerusalem in those days,” writes novelist Oz (The Same Sea, 2001, etc.) of the 1940s, “was either a poet or a writer or a researcher or a thinker or a scholar or a world reformer.” Oz’s uncle Joseph Klausner, for instance, kept a 25,000-volume library in every conceivable language, its dusty volumes providing a madeleine for the young writer, “the smell of a silent, secluded life devoted to scholarship,” even as his grandmother contemplated the dusty air of the Levant and concluded that the region was full of germs, whence “a thick cloud of disinfecting spirit, soaps, creams, sprays, baits, insecticides, and powder always hung in the air.” His own father had to sell his beloved books in order to buy food when money was short, though he often returned with more books. (“My mother forgave him, and so did I, because I hardly ever felt like eating anything except sweetcorn and icecream.”) Out in the street, Oz meets a young Palestinian woman who is determined to write great poems in French and English; cats bear such names as Schopenhauer and Chopin; the walls of the city ring with music and learned debate. But then there is the dark side: the war of 1948, with its Arab Legion snipers and stray shells, its heaps of dead new emigrants fresh from the Holocaust. “In Nehemiah Street,” writes Oz, “once there was a bookbinder who had a nervous breakdown, and he went out on his balcony and screamed, Jews, help, hurry, soon they’ll burn us all.” In this heady, dangerous atmosphere, torn by sectarian politics and the constant threat of terror, Oz comes of age, blossoming as a man of letters even as the bookish people of his youth begin to disappear one by one.
A boon for admirers of Oz’s work and contemporary Israeli literature in general.Pub Date: Nov. 15, 2004
ISBN: 0-15-100878-7
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2004
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