Gordon-Reed incorporates views by Johnson’s other biographers to create a fleshed-out, many-sided portrait.
A fair-minded, toned-down portrait of a deeply problematic president who could not rise to the country’s challenge after the Civil War.
While Abraham Lincoln is often considered our greatest president, the man who inherited the post after his assassination is often voted the worst. In this succinct study typical of the publisher’s informative, tidily composed series, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Gordon-Reed (History and Law/Harvard Univ.; The Hemingses of Monticello) carefully walks through the conflicts of Andrew Johnson’s career, culminating in his near impeachment in 1868. What compelled Johnson to block all measures of Reconstruction in the South and rehabilitate the very Southern planters and slave-owners who had earlier wrecked the Union? The author considers the measure of Johnson’s character, forged in the years of his family’s poverty after the early death of his father in Raleigh, N.C. Forced by his mother’s reduced circumstances into apprenticeship to a tailor, Johnson escaped and eventually set up shop as a tailor in Greenville, Tenn., married and grew somewhat prosperous, despite the lack of any formal education. It was during those early years, when he had “brushed up close to the nightmare of dependency and social degradation,” a state shared by the enslaved African Americans at the time, that Johnson developed his obsession with the wrongs of the poor whites at the hands of the planter class—and at the expense of blacks. A fiery debater, Johnson duly acceded to positions of alderman, mayor, congressman, governor and senator as a Tennessee Democrat. A staunch Unionist (despite his pro-slavery stance) and proponent of the Homestead Act, Johnson also made a lot of enemies. His ability to serve as a military governor (appointed by Lincoln) to a state in rebellion from the Union underscored his character’s ample contradictions, foretelling the executive trials ahead.
Gordon-Reed incorporates views by Johnson’s other biographers to create a fleshed-out, many-sided portrait.Pub Date: Jan. 18, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-8050-6948-8
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Times/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Dec. 30, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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