A well-focused cautionary tale about the checks and balances of power.
Versatile military historian Alexander (Sun Tzu at Gettysburg: Ancient Military Wisdom in the Modern World, 2011, etc.), a Korean War veteran, takes on the perilous confrontation between the U.S. military and the civilian command during that war.
The author sets the stage for the buildup to the Korean conflict with an engaging clarity, drawing many good lessons from the time—e.g., the tragic loss of China as an ally, the stunningly cavalier regard for the use of nuclear weapons and the fallibility of military “professionals.” First, Alexander backtracks to tell the story of the Far East pickle and how the U.S. was so fixated on its anti-communist paranoia that it failed to grasp that Mao Zedong had broken with the Kremlin and was making sincere attempts at rapprochement with Washington by 1949, rebuffed by President Harry Truman and Secretary of State Dean Acheson. Containment of communism was the official policy, as well as driving the North Koreans back to the agreed-upon 38th parallel after Kim Il-sung led an invasion of the south in June 1950. However, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, the U.S. commander in the Far East, World War II hero and now “proconsul” of occupied Japan, had other ideas—namely, that the U.S. should not stop at the 38th parallel but should unite the whole country, China be damned; moreover, he made alarming, erroneous statements about China’s imminent invasion of Formosa (Taiwan). MacArthur could not be ignored, especially after engineering his brilliant invasion at Inchon, which only increased his national stature. Alexander tracks MacArthur’s persistent rogue statements, his visit to Chiang Kai-shek and his frank insubordination for a terrific depiction of a clash of titan egos.
A well-focused cautionary tale about the checks and balances of power.Pub Date: May 7, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-425-26120-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Dutton Caliber
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2013
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
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
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