The well-known and respected television anchorman-correspondent shows a flair for essays in this collection that presents snapshots of our life and concerns in the 1990s. Rather has previously demonstrated his ability for memoirs in The Camera Never Blinks Twice (1994) and I Remember (1991), and although a few of the 99 short compositions in here were written by his colleagues, most are Rather’s. They appeared originally as either a newspaper or magazine article or as a broadcast from Rather’s daily radio program, and are categorized here into five chapters: “In the News, Across America,” “Foreign Policies, Global Perspectives,” “The Washington Scene: Politics and Politicians,” “Tributes,” and “The Lighter Side.” The book isn—t arranged chronologically, so the flexibility allows the stories to flow easily from one subject to another, one year to another. The subjects range from hard-hitting matters (human rights, foreign affairs) to lighthearted lifestyle stories (fishing, cartoons, entertainment, personalities), and there are seven essays—philosophical and not sensational—commenting on Kenneth Starr’s investigation of President Clinton. Throughout, Rather provides helpful follow-ups and additional comments to keep the reader up-to-date about characters and events since the story’s original appearance. His writing may not be as magically poetic as that of other news personalities, such as the late Charles Kuralt (the subject of one of the essays), but his strength for journalistic details serves well not only the serious stories but also the anecdotal ones. Even Rather’s most personal and emotional essay, “The Last Grandmother” (written in 1985 and the only one not from the 1990s), is sweet while avoiding sentimentality because of his skill for straightforward reportage. Rather loosens the necktie of his television persona and chats amiably about our times, offering readers a glimpse of his point of view, his likes and dislikes, his fears, and his humor.
Pub Date: June 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-688-16566-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1999
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
However charily one should apply the word, a beautiful book, an unconditionally involving memoir for our time or any time.
Maya Angelou is a natural writer with an inordinate sense of life and she has written an exceptional autobiographical narrative which retrieves her first sixteen years from "the general darkness just beyond the great blinkers of childhood."
Her story is told in scenes, ineluctably moving scenes, from the time when she and her brother were sent by her fancy living parents to Stamps, Arkansas, and a grandmother who had the local Store. Displaced they were and "If growing up is painful for the Southern Black girl, being aware of her displacement is the rust on the razor that threatens the throat." But alternating with all the pain and terror (her rape at the age of eight when in St. Louis With her mother) and humiliation (a brief spell in the kitchen of a white woman who refused to remember her name) and fear (of a lynching—and the time they buried afflicted Uncle Willie under a blanket of vegetables) as well as all the unanswered and unanswerable questions, there are affirmative memories and moments: her charming brother Bailey; her own "unshakable God"; a revival meeting in a tent; her 8th grade graduation; and at the end, when she's sixteen, the birth of a baby. Times When as she says "It seemed that the peace of a day's ending was an assurance that the covenant God made with children, Negroes and the crippled was still in effect."
However charily one should apply the word, a beautiful book, an unconditionally involving memoir for our time or any time.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1969
ISBN: 0375507892
Page Count: 235
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 14, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1969
SEEN & HEARD
IN THE NEWS
SEEN & HEARD
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