A compelling textual study of how JFK became all things to all people.
Former New York Sun managing editor Stoll (Samuel Adams: A Life, 2008) makes a correction to the JFK record.
The author hews closely to Kennedy’s speeches—from freshman Democratic congressman to senator to president—to revise what he perceives is a misrepresentation of the politician’s core beliefs. Indeed, he wasn’t a liberal, as defined as “big-spending, big government,” and as he noted of his liberal peers in Congress, “I’m not comfortable with those people.” Stoll reminds us that JFK’s conservative views were “hardly a secret during his lifetime.” They were recognized for what they were by the likes of Richard Nixon and Jacqueline Kennedy. JFK’s views on communism and fiscal restraint encapsulated the darling conservative theories propounded by leaders who came after him, notably Ronald Reagan. Since JFK wrote or heavily edited his speeches and penned numerous books, Stoll underscores what must have been JFK’s deeply held beliefs, starting with “Christian morality,” which emerged from his strong Catholic upbringing. His use of biblical passages (Rose Kennedy’s influence, apparently) to illustrate the struggle between good and evil as it was being played out during the Cold War is striking. Stoll sees in Kennedy’s deep religious convictions, fervent anti-communist stance, wariness of labor unions, and urge to exercise fiscal restraints and free trade more than rhetorical pandering to the electorate; they are essentially guides to how he intended to steer the country. His signature policies as president, besides attempting to defeat the communists in Cuba, were cutting taxes and bolstering the military, all of which were priorities before civil rights, which even Martin Luther King Jr. complained JFK had not done enough to advance. Stoll makes a solid case by carefully scouring the record.
A compelling textual study of how JFK became all things to all people.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-547-58598-7
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: Aug. 11, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
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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