A compelling re-telling of one of the saddest and most intriguing life stories in American politics.
Newsweek assistant managing editor Thomas (The Very Best Men, 1995, etc.) enlivens his engrossing RFK biography with fresh interviews and the use of previously restricted sources.
Unlike his princely elder brothers, Robert Kennedy was not blessed with ease or grace, nor could he bask, as they did, in the ambitious attentions of their powerful father. RFK did, however, possess courage and determination in prodigious degrees, and Thomas stresses that it was through the exercise of these qualities that RFK won for himself a place of honor, first in his family, and finally in American politics. Thomas paints a moving portrait of RFK as a boy, the runt of his family and a poor student, fighting determinedly to win the admiration of his father and of his elder brothers, all of whom he regarded with reverence. Through these struggles RFK gained a feeling of fellowship with outsiders and underdogs, which would be most famously displayed during his tragic campaign for the presidential nomination. His ferocity and determination were also put at the service of elder brother John, whose political campaigns he managed and whom he would serve as Attorney General and most trusted adviser. John had once dismissed his brooding little brother as “Black Robert,” but he eventually came to appreciate his loyalty and his dogged determination to win. After John’s assassination, RFK devoted years to mourning him. Although Thomas conveys the powerful sense of hope RFK’s campaign awakened, he does not speculate on what RFK might have accomplished if he’d avoided the assassin’s bullet. Instead, he ends his account with a description of RFK’s eloquently simple grave—which is fitting, since it is from the unfulfilled promise of a candidate who combined determined courage with a gentle concern for underdogs that the fascination with RFK mainly springs.
A compelling re-telling of one of the saddest and most intriguing life stories in American politics.Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2000
ISBN: 0-684-83480-4
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2000
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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
