by Willard Sterne Randall ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 10, 2003
A sturdy and readable life, in company with Randall’s other portraits of the Revolutionary generation.
A revealing but measured biography of the younger Founding Father, who, to the horror of libertarians ever since, “[drew] up a blueprint for a relationship between government and money.”
Who was right about America—Jefferson or Hamilton? Such, writes Randall (Humanities/ Champlain Coll., Vermont; co-author, Forgotten Americans, 1998, etc.), was the single question leveled at him at a meeting of the American Revolution Round Table a few years back. “The hour was late,” he writes, “my answer brief: Jefferson for the eighteenth century, Hamilton for more modern times.” He capably defends his judgment in this well-written life of Hamilton (1755–1804), who mixed Clintonesque appetites for pleasure and policy-wonking while busily putting the new republic’s economy on a sound footing. Hamilton’s life was wreathed in legend even in his time; more or less adopted by George Washington, he also had a talent for acquiring powerful enemies who made every effort to discredit the young man as a bastard, a closet royalist, and an enemy of democracy. Randall defends his subject on all counts; to be sure, he notes, Hamilton’s parents were not technically married, but “they lived as husband and wife for fifteen years,” which was good enough in the eyes of English common law; to be sure, he carried himself with the air of an aristocrat, but Hamilton was no fan of the Hanoverian kings, and if he showed unusual clemency to captured Loyalists, he remained a devoted soldier of the Continental Army all the same, ardently espousing the cause of liberty. Unlike more idealistic revolutionaries, however, Hamilton believed that the chief role of government was to subdue the passions of the people, who “are inherently corrupted by lust for power and greed for property,” which put him square up against the Jeffersonian camp and, in time, in the sights of Aaron Burr’s pistol. But before he fell, Hamilton crafted several institutions—among them the national bank and the germ of the IRS—that prove him a modern man indeed, for better or worse.
A sturdy and readable life, in company with Randall’s other portraits of the Revolutionary generation.Pub Date: Jan. 10, 2003
ISBN: 0-06-019549-5
Page Count: 480
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2002
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by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 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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by Jon Krakauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1996
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
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