An uneven but quietly charming, inspiring memoir.
The first woman from Missouri elected as a U.S. senator explores how she fuses traditional notions of femininity with boldness and ambition.
In her first book, McCaskill, with the assistance of journalist Ganey (Innocent Blood, 1990, etc.), recounts how, in the 1950s, female drive and a life outside the home weren't considered “ladylike.” However, her father gave her permission to be bossy and opinionated, and her mother raised her daughters to have independent minds. McCaskill’s career demonstrates how her collegial nature has benefitted her and earned her respect throughout her career. The author’s stories of her early days as a prosecutor and in the Missouri legislature are written to entertain, but they also illustrate the many obstacles she faced early in her career, often against various old-boys' networks in government. She runs down details of seemingly every issue in every one of her campaigns, including her potentially scandalous divorce—which she met head-on with candor and honesty; voters admired her "uncanny ability to deal with adversity.” McCaskill's storytelling style is quick-moving and demonstrates the breadth of her authenticity and commitment to being accountable to her constituents, but the book loses some of its color when she recounts examples of greater senatorial business and what she regards as exasperating "boondoggles" among her colleagues. Her characteristic skill, which would be impressive for senators from either side of the aisle, is her genuine connection with voters: she identifies their core concerns, empathizes and relates to them, and assures them that the government is hearing their voices. It is clear from her life stories that the author has always displayed the ability to make allies out of adversaries—whether in the House or Senate or during her methodical campaign for homecoming queen in high school.
An uneven but quietly charming, inspiring memoir.Pub Date: Aug. 11, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4767-5675-2
Page Count: 264
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: April 28, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2015
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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