Lovers of political memoirs may be dissatisfied, but readers interested in media and politics will learn a lot from the...
Charming memoir by the first official White House videographer.
Chaudhary, a punk rocker turned film professor, joined the Obama campaign in 2007, thanks to the aid of a friend on the New Media team, not even expecting the candidate would win the primaries. With a mission to gain the junior senator from Illinois as much YouTube exposure as possible, Chaudhary and associates developed a rapid-fire method of documentary filmmaking, capturing Obama in as many lights as possible: making campaign stops, chatting with volunteers and potential voters, taking the stage before a speech, making major addresses, etc. In the process, Obama’s team developed a new style of campaigning suited to the Internet age, a style that future campaigns will surely try to replicate. The point was not to make viral videos, but rather a large and diverse array of little films that could appeal to the broadest cross section of the electorate and show off the candidate’s “authenticity” to best effect. Chaudhary became one of Obama’s constant companions; fortunately for him, Obama enjoyed his slightly warped sense of humor and offbeat style, so much so that, after the election, he was invited to join the transition team and then forge a place for himself in the White House. Half joking, the author refers to the position, which he left in 2011, as being like the president’s wedding videographer, “if every day is a wedding.” Chaudhary was also responsible for creating and maintaining the popular West Wing Week, a weekly video roundup of White House events on whitehouse.gov. While he is amusing on the subjects of his modest “rise to power” and what he saw at the White House, the author writes with some passion about the history, uses and craft of political image-making, and he seems more comfortable offering pithy critiques of campaign aids than political gossip.
Lovers of political memoirs may be dissatisfied, but readers interested in media and politics will learn a lot from the lessons Chaudhary took away from his experiences.Pub Date: Aug. 21, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-8050-9572-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Times/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: June 25, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2012
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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