Blumenthal’s astute understanding of history allows him to ably demonstrate the significance of good leadership.
Memoir/history of the political leadership of the 20th century, from the former secretary of the treasury under President Jimmy Carter.
Blumenthal’s (The Invisible Wall: The Mystery of the Germans and the Jews, 1998) childhood in Nazi Germany and his family’s exile in the Shanghai ghetto produced a perceptive man who would watch and report the changes of the 20th century. Shanghai’s thousands of refugees managed to fend for themselves (they “were expected to administer their own affairs”) with doctors, a hospital, music, theater, libraries and a few different newspapers. Young Blumenthal spent his teenage years absorbing the various languages of Shanghai, learning the life of the streets and understanding that nothing would ever come easy. Throughout the book, he chronicles the vast changes that took place in the world and especially in Germany and China. Taking advantage of the state’s free education, he took a degree at Berkeley and moved on to Princeton’s Public Affairs program. His assignments in the Kennedy and Carter administrations, his work as trade representative and his many years as a corporate CEO allowed him to meet with leaders around the world. This is his memoir, so he can include what he likes, but his successes in the corporate world aren’t nearly as interesting as his opinions of world leaders. He views Hitler, Stalin, FDR, Churchill and Deng Xiaoping as the most influential leaders of the 20th century. His dealings with and impressions of world leaders such as Menachem Begin, the shah of Iran and Zhou Enlai are only part of his diverse insight into 20th-century history.
Blumenthal’s astute understanding of history allows him to ably demonstrate the significance of good leadership.Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4683-0729-0
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Overlook
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
Literature knows few champions as ardent and insightful—or as uncompromising—as Gornick, which is to readers’ good fortune.
Gornick’s (The Odd Woman and the City, 2016) ferocious but principled intelligence emanates from each of the essays in this distinctive collection.
Rereading texts, and comparing her most recent perceptions against those of the past, is the linchpin of the book, with the author revisiting such celebrated novels as D.H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers, Colette's The Vagabond, Marguerite Duras' The Lover, and Elizabeth Bowen's The House in Paris. Gornick also explores the history and changing face of Jewish American fiction as expressions of "the other." The author reads more deeply and keenly than most, with perceptions amplified by the perspective of her 84 years. Though she was an avatar of "personal journalism" and a former staff writer for the Village Voice—a publication that “had a muckraking bent which made its writers…sound as if they were routinely holding a gun to society’s head”—here, Gornick mostly subordinates her politics to the power of literature, to the books that have always been her intimates, old friends to whom she could turn time and again. "I read ever and only to feel the power of Life with a capital L," she writes; it shows. The author believes that for those willing to relinquish treasured but outmoded interpretations, rereading over a span of decades can be a journey, sometimes unsettling, toward richer meanings of books that are touchstones of one's life. As always, Gornick reveals as much about herself as about the writers whose works she explores; particularly arresting are her essays on Lawrence and on Natalia Ginzburg. Some may feel she has a tendency to overdramatize, but none will question her intellectual honesty. It is reflected throughout, perhaps nowhere so vividly as in a vignette involving a stay in Israel, where, try as she might, Gornick could not get past the "appalling tribalism of the culture.”
Literature knows few champions as ardent and insightful—or as uncompromising—as Gornick, which is to readers’ good fortune.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-374-28215-8
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Oct. 9, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2019
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
Smart hopes that sharing her story might help heal the scars of others, though the book is focused on what she suffered...
The inspirational and ultimately redemptive story of a teenage girl’s descent into hell, framed as a parable of faith.
The disappearance of 14-year-old Elizabeth Smart in 2002 made national headlines, turning an entire country into a search party; it seemed like something of a miracle when she reappeared, rescued almost by happenstance, nine months later. As the author suggests, it was something of a mystery that her ordeal lasted that long, since there were many times when she was close to being discovered. Her captors, a self-proclaimed religious prophet whose sacraments included alcohol, pornography and promiscuous sex, and his wife and accomplice, jealous of this “second wife” he had taken, weren’t exactly criminal masterminds. In fact, his master plan was for similar kidnappings to give him seven wives in all, though Elizabeth’s abduction was the only successful one. She didn’t write her account for another nine years, at which point she had a more mature perspective on the ordeal, and with what one suspects was considerable assistance from co-author Stewart, who helps frame her story and fill in some gaps. Though the account thankfully spares readers the graphic details, Smart tells of the abuse and degradation she suffered, of the fear for her family’s safety that kept her from escaping and of the faith that fueled her determination to survive. “Anyone who suggests that I became a victim of Stockholm syndrome by developing any feelings of sympathy for my captors simply has no idea what was going on inside my head,” she writes. “I never once—not for a single moment—developed a shred of affection or empathy for either of them….The only thing there ever was was fear.”
Smart hopes that sharing her story might help heal the scars of others, though the book is focused on what she suffered rather than how she recovered.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-250-04015-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2013
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