A detailed account of McCarthy and of the CPUSA marred by ideological blinders. For true believers only.
A revisionist biography of Joseph McCarthy and the red-baiting movement he spawned.
Most Americans look upon McCarthyism as part of one of the darkest and most shameful periods in the country’s history, one in which past associations, flimsy as they may have been, were drudged up and examined in the public square to foment hysteria and advance a craven politician’s career. But not Evans (The Theme Is Freedom, 1994, etc.), who views McCarthy as the misunderstood Cassandra, the lone truth-teller with the courage and insight to expose the vast red conspiracy that supposedly infiltrated the highest levels of government. The McCarthy portrayed here was ultimately undone by slicker, more media-savvy politicians with a vested interest in keeping quiet the Stalinists in our midst who were plotting the overthrow of the American government. The book is exhaustively researched and impeccably sourced, as it traces the rise of the Communist Party from the 1930s onward and identifies the lives and careers of fellow travelers as they worked their way up through the State Department. Though overlong, it is also well-written and accessible. But it’s highly unlikely that Evans will win any converts. McCarthy wasn’t a victim but a craven brute who played fast and loose with the facts, someone perfectly willing to destroy lives and reputations for political gain. A clear-eyed account of the Communist Party in midcentury would be most welcome, but would need to include an honest appraisal of the man properly regarded as its chief villain, rather than the Commie-under-your-bed conspiracy Evans lays out here.
A detailed account of McCarthy and of the CPUSA marred by ideological blinders. For true believers only.Pub Date: Nov. 6, 2007
ISBN: 978-1-4000-8105-9
Page Count: 672
Publisher: Crown Forum
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2007
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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