The subtitle notwithstanding, there’s hardly an untold story to be found here, but a worthy distillation all the same.
A military historian considers Lincoln as military leader—a far from nominal position.
A veteran of battle, Lincoln had disparaged James Polk’s touching off the Mexican War: “So far as Lincoln was concerned,” Perret (Jack: A Life Like No Other, 2001, etc.) writes, “Polk had gone to war with Mexico to revive the political fortunes of the Democratic Party, and not for any higher aim.” Similar charges would be leveled at Lincoln, with Republican Party founder William H. Seward urging him to “change the question before the Public from one of Slavery, or about Slavery to a question upon Union or Disunion.” But Lincoln took his abolitionist fight seriously—and, as many modern historians have observed, as the primary purpose for waging war on the South. Lincoln—who claimed that his greatest success in life was commanding a militia detachment in the Black Hawk War—was closely involved in the daily conduct of the war, Perret shows. Lincoln saw to it that generals were appointed by federal authority, not that of the states. He planned operations and logistics, and he wasn’t being hyperbolic when he famously remarked of a recalcitrant combat leader, “If General McClellan does not want to use the Army, I would like to borrow it.” He promoted leaders, and he broke them, as when he removed the military commander of occupied New Orleans for looting. He imposed strategy on his greatest commanders, including Ulysses S. Grant. And he even showed up for combat on a couple of occasions, though one Union officer sensibly warned him, “There is nothing in the Constitution authorizing the Commander in Chief to expose himself to the enemy’s fire where he can do no good!” Perret does an admirable job of weaving these episodes into a readable narrative.
The subtitle notwithstanding, there’s hardly an untold story to be found here, but a worthy distillation all the same.Pub Date: April 27, 2004
ISBN: 0-375-50738-8
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2004
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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