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AL FRANKEN, GIANT OF THE SENATE

Name: AL FRANKEN, GIANT OF THE SENATE
Author: Al Franken
ISBN: 978-1-5387-5998-1

by Al Franken ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 30, 2017

Here’s how the sausage is made on Capitol Hill—and in Franken’s case, made with a smile.

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The nation’s funniest senator speaks of the strange ways of government by “old white men.”

Franken, the Democratic senator from Minnesota and survivor of the early years of Saturday Night Live, is a definitively humorous fellow and about as candid as any politician can be expected to be. As he opens this memoir/user’s manual, he recounts that he is asked from time to time whether holding a seat in the Senate is as much fun as having been on SNL back in the glory days, to which his response is, “why would it be?” Why, indeed? He finds that his stock is increased among his Republican counterparts, however, when they learn that he knew Broderick Crawford, the tough hero of the classic law-and-order TV series Highway Patrol—proving, he says, precisely the oldness and whiteness of the legislative body, and mostly for the worse. Along the way, Franken is open about discussing his wife’s alcoholism and the effect it had on his first run for the Senate; far from being a liability, voters appreciated both the humanity and humility of their openness about the problem and Franken’s loyalty alike. The same problem was more insidious with the author’s erstwhile comedy partner Tom Davis; suffice it to say, as Franken does, that his reaction to the addiction “had made me a much less pleasant person to be around.” If anything, the author comes off as affable without being overly yielding, friendly but ready to scrap, and an unabashed devotee of the “Hillary Model”: “Be a workhorse, not a showhorse. Go to all your hearings. Come early, stay late. Do your homework. Don’t do national press. Be accessible to your state media and to your constituents.” And though he allows that Republicans “are just awful,” he also holds that Democrats have to accommodate the fact that they exist and try to get things done with them—all except maybe Ted Cruz.

Here’s how the sausage is made on Capitol Hill—and in Franken’s case, made with a smile.

Pub Date: May 30, 2017

ISBN: 978-1-5387-5998-1

Page Count: 416

Publisher: Twelve

Review Posted Online: April 16, 2017

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2017

Categories:

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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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NIGHT

by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...

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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.

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.