Justly returns our attention to Adams—though liberal readers will prefer Mark Puls’s 2006 biography, which emphasizes his...
Neocon view of the least-known Founding Father, arguing that his religious beliefs fueled his revolutionary ardor and, in today’s more secular America, have denied him his due from historians.
By the time this tendentious biography ends, it’s evident—to the author, at least—that Samuel Adams (1722–1803) would gleefully have supported firearms in every living room, prayer in the public schools and the invasion of Iraq. New York Sun managing editor Stoll does not display his conservative cards plainly until the end, but it’s patent that this is no disinterested analysis. However, it does provide the basic information. Adams’s father sold beer malt and was also christened Samuel (hence the name of today’s popular brand of brew). Before hostilities erupted, Adams the younger was a fiery journalist writing under a variety of pen names who made invaluable contributions to the revolution. Indeed, he was there on its opening day: Hiding from the British in Lexington, Adams and John Hancock quite literally heard, but did not see, the shot heard ’round the world. Before and after independence, Adams devoted much of his life to public service, as a representative to both Continental Congresses, a state legislator, lieutenant governor and governor of Massachusetts, whose constitution he helped frame. He never held national office. Stoll quotes frequently from Adams’s journalism and correspondence, making certain that readers are aware of nearly everything he ever wrote that alluded to the Bible—he liked to compare America’s revolutionaries with the biblical Israelites—or revealed his belief that religion should be at the heart of American life. Adams’s last known letter was to Thomas Paine, chiding him for his work on the skeptical The Age of Reason.
Justly returns our attention to Adams—though liberal readers will prefer Mark Puls’s 2006 biography, which emphasizes his role as a rabble-rousing man of the common people.Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-7432-9911-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Free Press
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2008
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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