A brilliantly written cautionary tale for those who believe a hard-nosed businessman would bring a breath of fresh air to...
Slim, thoroughly satisfying account of the president overwhelmed by the Great Depression.
Veteran historian Leuchtenburg (The White House Looks South: Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Lyndon B. Johnson, 2005, etc.) makes no attempt to rehabilitate Hoover (1874–1964), though he acknowledges that the brilliantly successful entrepreneur quickly became a worldwide celebrity after turning to public service at age 40. In London at the outbreak of World War I, Hoover agreed to organize relief for the famine that followed the German advance into Belgium and performed superbly. Widely touted as a 1920 presidential candidate, he offended Republican leaders with a self-serving statement announcing that he would join their party only if it fulfilled certain conditions. Newly elected Warren G. Harding appointed Hoover Secretary of Commerce even though colleagues resented his dictatorial manner, and his nonstop energy made him a media icon. When Coolidge declined to run in 1928, the fact that he and his cabinet detested Hoover did not prevent him from easily winning the nomination. Leuchtenburg disagrees with historians who feel that Hoover would rank among our better presidents if it were not for the Depression. Even before the 1929 crash, his lack of political acumen and terrible relations with Congress had soured most supporters. He made genuine attempts to alleviate the Depression but opposed federal relief programs, insisting that this was the responsibility of local government and private charities, which were doing a good job. (In fact, they were bankrupt.) Leaving office, he was so widely hated that Republicans considered him political poison and kept him away from conventions until after WWI.
A brilliantly written cautionary tale for those who believe a hard-nosed businessman would bring a breath of fresh air to the American presidency.Pub Date: Jan. 6, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-8050-6958-7
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Times/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 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 moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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