This and Sorensen's Kennedy (p. 860) will continue to stand out long after the discussion of whether or not "instant history" is a valid, or even ethical, form. Schlesinger's book is much more intimate in tone than Sorensen's and its spiced word portraits of the men around Kennedy have drawn the heaviest fire based on the two pre-publication exposures in Life. Yet, it will be for these that future historians will thank him, while today's critics will read him avidly — and then decry him, from huff to howl. Schlesinger obviously did not labor in awe of his President; theirs were equal, atypical backgrounds and they shared many of the same intellectual and social contacts. The many quotations he attributes to Kennedy and his circle show a keen ear for the flash fire of political wit and a taste for invective that was likely to be suppressed in their public utterances. This helps close the distance that has inevitably increased between Kennedy the man and Kennedy the martyr. A Thousand Days is more than a 1000 pages long if you count the index and Schlesinger has isolated the personalities, the election, the Congressional record, the international crises and the domestic issues in long, speculative chapters. He was aware of and particularly good at estimating the Kennedy influence beyond the political. In the arts, American humor, and intellectual as well as general attitudes, the Kennedy style had something going and the author/historian is especially competent to trace it. If Sorensen is the better memorializer, Schlesinger is the better visualizer. Both have written that seldom book — the one you have to read and will probably want at home.
Pub Date: Nov. 29, 1965
ISBN: 0618219277
Page Count: 1124
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 22, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1965
BOOK REVIEW
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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