No doubt about it, in this age of Watergate and the tainted Executive, Bill Buckley's general "antistatist" orientation and the dream of deflating the operations of the federal government seem a lot more appealing than ia the mid-'60's when the liberal faith in the benevolent megastate was boundless. And yet, this small (though hardly modest) proposal for revamping the "procedures" of government intervention in welfare, taxation, justice and education, disappointingly tums out to be a hackneyed reiteration of the nostrums of the National Review. Well, hot entirely: perhaps there is good sense in the proposal to limit the Executive to a single six year term; and Buckley's plan to conscript the nation's 18-year-olds in the year between high school and college matriculation to perform nonprofessional services in hospitals and nursing homes for the aged is certainly ingenious, possibly even workable. And who could disagree with the plea to introduce tax reforms "aimed at coherence, symmetry, and an end to hallucination?" It is only when he spells out the substance of what he has ia mind that one recoils: nothing less than a straight across-the-boards regressive 15% income tax on everyone, rich and poor with all corporation taxes on GM, Ford, ITT, etc., to be abolished entirely! And how dreary to read yet again the inevitable attack on the Warren Court with its "overelaboration of the rights of the defendant" — as though that were the only reason for clogged court calendars, plea bargaining and rising crime rates. Egads — in the name of locking up more hard-core criminals he even wants to repeal the Fifth Amendment. Inevitably, Buckley's glib pomposity and witty elitism will appeal to his usual constituency. Based on a series of lectures at Russell Sage College, this is to be condensed in the February 1974 issue of Harper's Magazine.
Pub Date: Jan. 20, 1973
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1973
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
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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