A stately, knowledgeable study jostling for space among the groaning bookshelves devoted to the third president.
A fully fleshed biography of Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) that emphasizes his creative paradoxes and accomplishments.
As presented by Boles (History/Rice Univ.; University Builder: Edgar Odell Lovett and the Founding of the Rice Institute, 2007, etc.), Jefferson, “in all his guises,” displayed an industrious commitment to public service in the young republic, passionate devotion to personal relationships and copious letter writing, and dedication to his state and Monticello homestead. Above all, Jefferson possessed enormous intellectual curiosity, starting from his studies of philosophy and science at the College of William and Mary, and later law, continuing through his years living in Paris as commissioner and later secretary of state, and climaxing in his creation of the University of Virginia. Boles elegantly delineates the milestones of Jefferson’s life and the expression of his mind—e.g., in the writing of the Declaration of Independence, in which, “with consummate artistry, [he] summarized years of thinking and political philosophizing in about two hundred words.” A man of his time, Jefferson was steeped in the revolutionary ideals of the Enlightenment, such as the need for religious tolerance and the belief (ultimately struck from the Declaration) that slaves “had rights identical to those of the rest of the American people”—and yet he notoriously held on to his own slaves. Boles treats Jefferson’s relationship with his young slave Sally Hemings with the same discretion that Jefferson did, though after she bore him five children, the secret was certainly well-known, both at Monticello and publicly. Curiously, Jefferson never traveled farther than 50 miles west of Monticello, yet as president, he was obsessed with America’s western expansion and famously secured the Louisiana Purchase. The author devotes a chapter to Jefferson’s “Living with Paradox” and reminds readers not to judge the sage of Monticello by 21st-century terms. Still, regarding emancipation, “in no other aspect of his life does Jefferson seem more distant from us or more disappointing.”
A stately, knowledgeable study jostling for space among the groaning bookshelves devoted to the third president.Pub Date: April 25, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-465-09468-4
Page Count: 640
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 19, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2017
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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