A lucid, often witty account of a remarkably assertive leader whom historians, when polled, consider one of our near-great...
A spirited biography of one of the most effective single-term presidents (1845–1849) who promoted war against Mexico and left office having vastly expanded both American borders and the powers of the executive office.
Veteran American historian Borneman (1812: The War that Forged a Nation, 2004, etc.) draws no parallels with the present administration but makes a convincing case that James K. Polk (1795–1849) deserves high marks as a hands-on leader who laid the groundwork for an American empire. Born near the birthplace of his mentor, Andrew Jackson, Polk made his mark in Tennessee politics as his fellow Tennessean rocketed to national prominence. He ran successfully for Congress in 1825, supported Jackson enthusiastically during his presidency (1829–37) and rose to the position of Speaker of the House. Borneman rejects the traditional view of Polk as a dark horse who emerged from obscurity to win the deadlocked 1844 Democratic convention. In fact, he was nationally known, a fiercely ambitious man with an eye on the presidency who enjoyed vigorous support from Jackson. Once in office he conducted himself with Jacksonian energy. After welcoming Texas into the Union and settling the boundaries of Oregon, he sent provocative orders to troops along the Southwest border, using the inevitable skirmish to demand that Congress declare war. The Mexican War (1846–48) was popular in the South and West, less so in the North despite his proclamation that America was fighting to defend freedom. Once again, Borneman draws no parallels with present wars, pointing out that Polk made no secret of his intention to annex Mexican territory. At the end of a single term, he had achieved all his announced goals, domestic and foreign, often against fierce opposition. Polk’s single-minded, jingoistic, workaholic personality would charm few readers today, but Borneman’s admiration for his subject shines through.
A lucid, often witty account of a remarkably assertive leader whom historians, when polled, consider one of our near-great presidents.Pub Date: April 15, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-4000-6560-8
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2008
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
A horde-pleaser, well-written and full of surprises.
“The Mongols swept across the globe as conquerors,” writes the appreciative pop anthropologist-historian Weatherford (The History of Money, 1997, etc.), “but also as civilization’s unrivaled cultural carriers.”
No business-secrets fluffery here, though Weatherford does credit Genghis Khan and company for seeking “not merely to conquer the world but to impose a global order based on free trade, a single international law, and a universal alphabet with which to write all the languages of the world.” Not that the world was necessarily appreciative: the Mongols were renowned for, well, intemperance in war and peace, even if Weatherford does go rather lightly on the atrocities-and-butchery front. Instead, he accentuates the positive changes the Mongols, led by a visionary Genghis Khan, brought to the vast territories they conquered, if ever so briefly: the use of carpets, noodles, tea, playing cards, lemons, carrots, fabrics, and even a few words, including the cheer hurray. (Oh, yes, and flame throwers, too.) Why, then, has history remembered Genghis and his comrades so ungenerously? Whereas Geoffrey Chaucer considered him “so excellent a lord in all things,” Genghis is a byword for all that is savage and terrible; the word “Mongol” figures, thanks to the pseudoscientific racism of the 19th century, as the root of “mongoloid,” a condition attributed to genetic throwbacks to seed sown by Mongol invaders during their decades of ravaging Europe. (Bad science, that, but Dr. Down’s son himself argued that imbeciles “derived from an earlier form of the Mongol stock and should be considered more ‘pre-human, rather than human.’ ”) Weatherford’s lively analysis restores the Mongols’ reputation, and it takes some wonderful learned detours—into, for instance, the history of the so-called Secret History of the Mongols, which the Nazis raced to translate in the hope that it would help them conquer Russia, as only the Mongols had succeeded in doing.
A horde-pleaser, well-written and full of surprises.Pub Date: March 2, 2004
ISBN: 0-609-61062-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2003
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