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GENERAL JAMES LONGSTREET

Name: GENERAL JAMES LONGSTREET
Author: Jeffry D. Wert
ISBN: 0-671-70921-6

THE CONFEDERACY'S MOST CONTROVERSIAL SOLDIER--A BIOGRAPHY

by Jeffry D. Wert ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 1993

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A carefully argued account of the general whom Robert E. Lee affectionately called ``my old war horse''—the same man who in the mythology of the Lost Cause became the scapegoat for the failure of Confederate arms at Gettysburg. Commander of the First Corps in Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, Longstreet (1821-1904) was not only Lee's senior officer but his most reliable—even more so, Wert (Mosby's Rangers, 1990) says, than Stonewall Jackson. Described by a colleague as ``a rock in steadiness when sometimes in battle the world seemed flying to pieces,'' Longstreet served at First and Second Manassas, the Seven Days campaign, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chicamauga, the Wilderness, and the surrender at Appomattox. Lee depended on his counsel, except at Gettysburg, when three times Lee rejected Longstreet's advice not to make the fateful frontal assault. Although ostensibly covering Longstreet's entire life, Wert concentrates on the general's Civil War record, explaining the personality quirks and decisions that made the general, so fearless and beloved during the war, such a lightning rod of controversy in its aftermath. Longstreet excelled at Second Manassas, as well as at Fredericksburg, where his network of trenches, fieldworks, and artillery sealed the doom of thousands of Federals. But unlike Lee, Longstreet questioned the value of the tactical offensive and would risk his men's lives only in a carefully planned attacks with reasonable chances for success. Wert shows that Longstreet's warnings of disaster at Gettysburg were borne out—and he demonstrates that, except for one brief lapse, Longstreet carried out Lee's orders vigorously despite his misgivings. Longstreet's troubles resulted from his postwar decision to join the Republican Party—which made him the Benedict Arnold of the South—and his too-late, too-self-serving defense of his record in his memoirs. A fair, though not uncritical, reappraisal of one of the Civil War's great but maligned soldiers. (Twelve maps, 16 pp. of b&w photographs—not seen)

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1993

ISBN: 0-671-70921-6

Page Count: 528

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1993

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

- BOOK REVIEW
CIVIL WAR BARONS
by Jeffry D. Wert

- BOOK REVIEW
A GLORIOUS ARMY
by Jeffry D. Wert

- BOOK REVIEW
CAVALRYMAN OF THE LOST CAUSE
by Jeffry D. Wert

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

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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

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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NIGHT

by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...

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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.

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.