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AMERICAN CAESAR

Name: AMERICAN CAESAR
Author: William Manchester
ISBN: 0316544981

DOUGLAS MACARTHUR 1880 - 1964

by William Manchester ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 30, 1978

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American Caesar, no less: from the title onward, Manchester has produced a biography of MacArthur so grandiose and so singleminded as to satisfy even the giant ego of its subject. But this "great thundering paradox," "the best of men and the worst of men," is not without his manifold, if more life-size, fascinations. He was, ineluctably, his father's son: at 18, Arthur MacArthur dashed up Missionary Ridge to plant the Union flag and win the battle—and later, his insubordination as military governor of the Philippines cost him his pest and his career. Young MacArthur learned everything from his father, it appears ("It's the orders you disobey that make you famous," he said in World War I), except what his paranoia perhaps did not permit him to learn; how to escape his father's fate. But then Manchester, constantly tolling the knell of doom, would not have his tragic Greek hero to range alongside his Napoleon (the favorite comparison) or, more aptly, his Winfield Scott. He has, however, assembled massive evidence of how the MacArthur legend grew, cannily nurtured by its subject and persistently mocked to his detriment. Splashing ashore at Leyte, he was caught by a photographer scowling—not in "steely determination," as the public thought, but in outrage at the naval officer who hadn't directed his landing craft to a dock. Thereafter he deliberately waded ashore for cameramen, and incurred the scorn of troops who had already pegged him—with only a little justification—as "Dugout Doug." Also manifest throughout is the political streak that led him to mix inappropriately in civilian affairs—as contrasted with the more politically astute Eisenhower and so well understood by FDR, who alone emerges as more than MacArthur's match. What Manchester does not pursue are the personal threads (an infatuated first marriage to a "flapper," the escape to anonymity of over-cherished son Arthur); what he does not amplify is the history (the Japanese occupation is particularly oversimplified and blurred). And all his elaboration of the circumstances leading up to MacArthur's dismissal, however extenuating in some particulars, does not alter the standard textbook interpretation of that event. He has documented the legend, filled in the image; what is still wanted is a considered portrayal of the good/bad soldier as only the author sees him.

Pub Date: Sept. 30, 1978

ISBN: 0316544981

Page Count: 815

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2013

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1978

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | HISTORICAL & MILITARY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

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THE LAST LION
by William Manchester and Paul Reid

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A WORLD LIT ONLY BY FIRE
by William Manchester

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THE LAST LION
by William Manchester

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

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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

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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INTO THE WILD

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...

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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.

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor will it to readers of Krakauer's narrative. (4 maps) (First printing of 35,000; author tour)