A feisty Roosevelt takes center stage in a mostly lively history.
An account of a much-publicized early-20th-century trial that exposed “the sordid reality” of New York State politics.
In April 1915, eager spectators filled a Syracuse courtroom in anticipation of a trial involving one of the most prominent men in America: former President Theodore Roosevelt, who was being sued for libel by party boss William Barnes over Roosevelt’s published assertion that Barnes was corrupt. The trial yielded a 3,738-page typed transcript as well as colorful reports in newspapers across the country, sources that ABC’s chief legal affairs correspondent Abrams and Fisher (co-authors: Lincoln’s Last Trial: The Murder Case that Propelled Him to the Presidency, 2018, etc.) have mined thoroughly to produce a detailed—sometimes dramatic, sometimes humdrum—account of the drama. The abundant sources prove to be both a boon and a shortcoming: Not all of the 104 witnesses who testified during the trial were compelling; nor were some issues—such as Barnes’ “alleged involvement in printing industry corruption,” which occupied the court for many days. The highlight of the trial—and of this book—was the week that Roosevelt, “an explosion of energy,” took the stand. As the New York Press reported, Roosevelt dominated the courtroom “with that marvelous personality of his and has won more friends in Syracuse than he made at any particular time.” After more than 38 hours of questioning, heckled by the plaintiff’s lawyers, who tried to goad him into anger, he emerged “smiling and happy and ready for more,” stepping down from the stand and grinning at the jury. The trial was not the only news: War was brewing in Europe, and President Woodrow Wilson strained to keep America out of the fray. Roosevelt strongly urged engagement, a stand that worried his lawyers, who were fearful of alienating several jurors of German descent. Roosevelt held back from criticizing Germany—until the sinking of the Lusitania, “piracy accompanied by murder,” he said, impelled him to urge America’s immediate entry into the war.
A feisty Roosevelt takes center stage in a mostly lively history.Pub Date: May 21, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-335-01644-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Hanover Square Press
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2019
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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