In an engaging and readable work of history and autobiography, Chicago's first woman mayor reflects on the history of her city and of her tenure. Weaving her own story and that of her Irish immigrant ancestors into the narrative, Byrne devotes much space to the tumultuous story of Chicago from its beginnings as a frontier outpost to its growth into the multiethnic city it has become. She presents her own political rise as part of the tale of the ascent of the city's traditionally despised immigrant groups—particularly the Irish and the Germans. By the time Byrne was entering public life in the early 1960's (as an idealistic Kennedy supporter), Chicago was ruled by such groups through Mayor Richard Daley's celebrated political machine. Byrne joined the machine and became commissioner of consumer affairs. But as commissioner, Byrne claims, she quixotically resisted the pervasive corruption and back-room dealing of the machine. Ultimately, she was fired for attempting to blow the whistle on an illegal taxicab rate-increase. Byrne tells how ``Taxigate'' was the starting point of her successful run for mayor, one in which she dreamed of revitalizing Chicago's slums and neglected neighborhoods. She also tells of how she deferred those dreams once she learned that she had inherited an enormous deficit from her predecessor. Throughout her tenure as mayor, she pressed to reconcile her dreams of urban renewal with financial and political constraints, with her most spectacular success coming at Cabrini Green, a low-income housing project, where she took up residence and exorcised the gangs. In 1983, in a three-way race, she lost the mayoralty to Harold Washington. A compelling account of modern urban politics, from one who was there. (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: March 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-393-03073-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1992
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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