A fruitful if arguable thesis yields a book worth reading in this election year.
A stimulating look at the presidency from the vantage point of the wars America has fought—and, in some instances, the none-too-noble reasons for them.
New York University politics professors de Mesquita and Smith, co-authors of The Dictator’s Handbook: Why Bad Behavior Is Almost Always Good Politics (2011), seem guaranteed to ruffle nationalist feathers with a few of their reinterpretations of American history. Abraham Lincoln, for instance, promoted the federalist policies that led to the Civil War not just out of a wish to preserve the Union, but also out of “burning personal ambition,” his chief aim being to occupy the White House. While George Washington “is perhaps unique among American presidents in not having manifested any great desire for political power,” he also benefited greatly from the revolution in which so many shed their blood. By the authors’ account, the bloodier the hands of the president, oftentimes, the greater the esteem in which he (and perhaps she) will be held. Lincoln, for instance, won the presidency by the tiniest of electoral margins, with a split opposing ticket, so much so that only some 40 percent went to Lincoln; that was enough to carry the race, but we account him great for having led the nation through war. The authors propose an idealistic but not soppy counterfactual: if presidents were prized for keeping the peace, as well as not squandering the public treasure on war, then Warren Harding would top our list of greatest presidents, followed by Gerald Ford and then John F. Kennedy; Lincoln would rank near the bottom of the list, tying with George W. Bush. Even without exhaustive explanation of the methodology, these rankings are provocative, and certainly the authors do not shy from controversy—criticizing Barack Obama, for instance, for “a willingness to back down” in situations that could have done with more bellicosity.
A fruitful if arguable thesis yields a book worth reading in this election year.Pub Date: Sept. 27, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-61039-662-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: July 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2016
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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