A book that will fuel conspiracy theorists and further blacken Johnson’s legacy.
Linking LBJ to blackmail, intimidation, and even murder.
Mellen (English/Temple Univ.; The Great Game in Cuba: How the CIA Sabotaged its Own Plot to Unseat Fidel Castro, 2013, etc.) chronicles “the dark side of Lyndon Johnson” by investigating two men whom she finds surprisingly absent from Robert A. Caro’s acclaimed four-volume Johnson biography: financier and con man Billie Sol Estes, who accused Johnson of orchestrating multiple murders, and Malcolm Everett "Mac" Wallace, a fellow Texan who the author claims was Johnson’s acolyte. Estes’ scandalous machinations made national news, but Wallace’s service as Johnson’s “hatchet man” is little known. “Wallace’s story is so intriguing,” writes the author, “because, unlike other of Johnson’s acolytes, it is difficult to prove what he did for [LBJ], and what [LBJ], in turn, did for him.” Mellen’s handling of evidence makes her argument disturbing and, in parts, confusing. In mounting her indictment of Johnson as a manipulative, power-hungry politician who considered himself above the law (a portrait that Caro endorses), the author assumes that where there’s smoke, there’s fire. “Circumstantial evidence…is most certainly evidence,” she asserts, and hearsay provokes her interest. Her sources include research into Johnson’s life and politics conducted by reporter Holland McCombs, on assignment for Life; and the files of John Fraser Harrison, a former Dallas reserve police officer obsessed with finding “the Texas roots of the Kennedy assassination.” Besides damning Johnson, Mellen aims to counter Estes’ accusation that Wallace served as Johnson’s hit man and, on Johnson’s orders, was at the Texas School Book Depository when Kennedy was shot. Although she finds “no credible evidence” for either claim, Mellen blows plenty of smoke toward Johnson: “Loose ends, contradictory facts suggesting Lyndon Johnson’s complicity, remain.” She also accuses Johnson of racism (admittedly, not a new claim) and, for reasons of international intrigue, of refusing to rescue sailors on the USS Liberty after it was bombed in 1967.
A book that will fuel conspiracy theorists and further blacken Johnson’s legacy.Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-62040-806-3
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2016
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
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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