An absorbing portrait of the growth of Eisenhower the man and a fine analysis of the accomplishments of Eisenhower the...
Exhaustive, highly readable study of Ike the soldier, from his modest Kansas origins through V-E Day.
Descended from a long line of religious pacifists, Dwight D. Eisenhower was to end his political career by decrying the “military-industrial complex.” Yet, retired US Army officer and military historian D'Este (Patton: A Genius for War, 1993) points out, although he was president of the US, Eisenhower “would have been elated merely to be remembered as a soldier.” Thus, D'Este limits his treatment to Ike's military accomplishments. The first was graduating in the class of 1915 at West Point, where his indifference to discipline won him many demerits. After WWI, which he sat out as a trainer of the infant Tank Corps, Eisenhower distinguished himself in staff assignments, through associations with key officers who aided his climb up the Army ladder. D'Este portrays his subject as a complex personality, beneath whose sunny smile and easygoing manner lay ruthless ambition and a first-rate intelligence. After an important stint in 1925 at the Staff School in Fort Leavenworth, Eisenhower commenced a career as a high-level staff officer, mostly engaged in turbulent service stateside and in the Philippines to the imperious, histrionic Douglas MacArthur. After WWII began, Eisenhower's mastery of the problems of industrial mobilization endeared him to George Marshall and won him assignments as strategic planner for the Mediterranean campaigns. The bulk of D'Este's account is devoted to Ike's masterful command of the Allied effort in Europe, which entailed brilliant diplomacy as much as military acumen. The biographer not only conveys the strategic problems Eisenhower faced, but shows how the general’s personal qualities—his unpretentiousness, single-minded dedication to the task, and sensitivity to the difficulty of forging unity between two proud allies who were often mistrustful of each other—ultimately drove the Allied war machine to victory.
An absorbing portrait of the growth of Eisenhower the man and a fine analysis of the accomplishments of Eisenhower the general.Pub Date: June 4, 2002
ISBN: 0-8050-5686-6
Page Count: 864
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2002
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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