A sturdy, instructive biography of the “first of the Founding Fathers to call for independence, first to call for union, and...
In public awareness, Richard Henry Lee (1732-1794) has slipped into the cracks of historical anonymity; this book pulls him back into the light.
Historian Unger, who has published frequently about the Founding Fathers (Henry Clay: America’s Greatest Statesman, 2015, etc.), returns with a generous, well-documented account of the life of Lee, focusing on his varied roles in the birth of the United States. He served in the Continental Congress, was among the first U.S. senators (appointed in his day, not elected), and was instrumental, as Unger shows, in the addition of the Bill of Rights to the Constitution. Lee was not a fan of the latter document—he feared federal overreach—but he later mellowed. The author rehearses the Revolutionary War, revisiting significant moments but always with an eye on Lee, a noncombatant: what were his responsibilities, how did he carry them out, with whom was he corresponding? Lee was friends with most of the significant figures of the time—Washington, Jefferson, Madison et al.—though those friendships waxed and waned as situations changed. Although Unger does not especially focus on these men as entitled, white, Christian, slave-owning males, neither does he neglect the subject. He notes, for example, that the first Senate comprised the richest white male property-owners in the country, and all of them abhorred taxes. The author also astutely reminds us that unifying for the Revolution and for the Constitution was an extremely difficult and complex business. Tempers flared, and civil war lay barely below the surface. It took the fierce determination of a few—and quite a bit of good fortune—to forge the documents that we now revere. At times, Unger can’t resist using superlatives, but, considering what ensued, who can blame him?
A sturdy, instructive biography of the “first of the Founding Fathers to call for independence, first to call for union, and first to call for a bill of rights.”Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-306-82561-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Da Capo
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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