Altogether, an exemplary and highly readable work that ably explains why FDR merits continued honor.
An outstanding biography of “the most gifted American statesman of the twentieth century,” who, to the consternation of conservatives ever since, created the activist presidency.
Franklin Roosevelt was callow and arrogant when he entered politics. Descended from the colonial aristocracy, he had all the prejudices of the moneyed class. But, recounts an admiring Smith (John Marshall, 1996, etc.), the polio that confined him to a wheelchair converted him into a champion of the common man for much of his career, particularly as president. Smith writes that FDR was hardworking, astute, smart and vindictive; he punished enemies for decades, while his political friends reaped ample rewards. So it was that, in the storied Hundred Days that opened the New Deal, Roosevelt “let it be known that he would make no patronage appointments until the end of the session”—and he had more than 100,000 of them to hand out, an arsenal calculated to repay loyalty. Just so, Roosevelt carefully administered the pork, though at the same time he delegated authority to those he deemed trustworthy—a roster that did not include his wife, Eleanor—and practiced what might be called a controlled candor so that the press and people would see things his way. The result of this highly practical, even Machiavellian politics was an unprecedented four terms in office, preceded by unprecedented electoral landslides. Critics will note in Smith’s pages that FDR was preparing to enter the war on the Allied side much earlier than the standard sources allow, but they may be disarmed by Smith’s view of FDR’s response to the Holocaust, which has generated much controversy. (The sole shortcoming: FDR’s career was so vast and complex that, large though it is, Smith’s narrative sometimes takes shortcuts; his account of the GI Bill of Rights, for example, leaves out key players and elides the tale so that FDR seems its only author.)
Altogether, an exemplary and highly readable work that ably explains why FDR merits continued honor.Pub Date: May 22, 2007
ISBN: 1-4000-6121-0
Page Count: 880
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2007
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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