A lively political book that focuses more on pop psychology than objective analysis.
A journalist explores the motivations and emotional constructs of nine political wives who chose to stay in their marriages—in some cases, only for a while—after being confronted with their husbands’ infidelities.
Why do wives of prominent politicians stand by their men after they have been betrayed, especially when that disloyalty has been publicly revealed? This is the question Michaud, a former columnist for Newsday, sets out to answer in her gossipy debut book. She establishes a rather esoteric scale by which to evaluate these women’s decisions—something she calls the White Queen Quotient. For those unfamiliar with 15th-century British history (or the eponymous TV series), the original White Queen was Elizabeth Woodville, who “apparently knew that her husband Edward IV had mistresses—and even one special mistress, Elizabeth Shore. But the rewards of being queen kept her bound to her royal husband.” Michaud then creates five attributes by which she establishes her subjects’ White Queen rating: Submitting to Tradition; Longing for Security; A Personal Sense of Patriotism; Responsibility for Family’s Emotional Health; and Ambition to Build and Bequeath a Legacy. From Eleanor Roosevelt (whose heartache was kept relatively private) to Huma Abedin (assistant to Hillary Clinton and former wife of Anthony Weiner), Michaud, using numerous secondary research sources, details the family histories and accomplishments of each of the women and their erring spouses. There’s not much new here about the six American couples studied, but U.S. readers will likely be less familiar with the one Israeli and two British couples dissected. Skillful prose makes the dishy profiles an engaging read. Unfortunately, Michaud sometimes veers into judgmental speculation and indulges in unsubstantiated assumptions. For example, after discussing the humiliation of wives facing the press during their husbands’ standard confessionals, she writes: “The publicity allows the women who stay to inflate their sense of themselves as loyal, and to bask in other ego-pleasing fantasies.” Of Abedin, the author offers: “Huma had to choose: Anthony Weiner or Hillary Clinton. In the end, it wasn’t Huma’s injured wifely feelings that ended her marriage so much as her professional pride and ambition.”
A lively political book that focuses more on pop psychology than objective analysis.Pub Date: March 20, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9976633-1-0
Page Count: 279
Publisher: Ogunquit-NY Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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