Yet another JFK paramour! Is there no mercy? This is a lover with a difference, however, a woman whom Kennedy first wooed before he was president and even before he was married (though he was engaged) to Jackie. The author was a lissome, 21-year-old, upper-class Swede on vacation at the French Riviera when she had a chance encounter with then Senator Kennedy. They dined and danced and sat on the edge of a cliff overlooking the Mediterranean, where he confessed that he was to be married the next week but added, ``if I had met you one week before . . . I would have cancelled the whole thing.'' As we know, he did not cancel, but a half-year later was writing to Gunilla that he would be returning to Europe and would like to meet. The rendezvous was in Sweden and according to von Post, they fell into bed where his ``tenderness was a revelation.'' The romance went on for another few years, mostly long-distance, says von Post, while Kennedy struggled with his father's dominance and his own ambition. Father Joseph and the prospect of the presidency won, although JFK suggested at one point that Gunilla establish herself in New York City's Carlyle Hotel, later infamous as a presidential playground. Gunilla wisely refused, going on to marry a Swedish notable, bear children, be tragically widowed, remarry, divorce, and lose a child through leukemia. She identified with Jacqueline's similar experiences. But she kept the letters from and the memories of the riveting young Jack Kennedy and is sharing them with us now (aided by Johnes, the author of two biographies). A good portion of this book is also devoted to establishing her credentials as a ``good girl,'' one of JFK's true loves. A sweet but unconvincing effort to depict JFK as an only somewhat unwilling victim of his father's dreams. (8 pages b&w photos) (Author tour)
Pub Date: Aug. 20, 1997
ISBN: 0-609-60095-8
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1997
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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