A hard-hitting critique of a nation “in mortal peril.”
The longest-serving member of Congress recalls a time when government worked for the people.
In a feisty memoir, Michigan representative Dingell (b. 1926), a Democrat, looks back at nearly six decades of public service, recounting some of his proudest accomplishments, toughest fights, and the regrettable transformation of Congress from “largely a place of comity and mutual respect across the aisle” to a rancorous, partisan body reflecting the “cancer of cynicism eating away at our country” under a president unfit for office. Half of the memoir celebrates the career of the author’s father, a congressman who championed social justice and economic fairness. When John Dingell Sr. died in 1955, his son was persuaded to run for his seat; at the age of 29, he won a special election. Serving with 11 presidents and 10 Speakers of the House and casting more than 25,000 votes, Dingell saw Congress pass bipartisan clean-air amendments, the Affordable Care Act, the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, and the Endangered Species Act. He also witnessed the rise of the tea party, which populated the House of Representatives with Republicans who had run “against the very idea of the federal government.” Now retired, he watches in frustration as “Republi-cons work overtime to destroy all we’ve achieved and more,” apparently intent “on driving things backward, to return to an America that was less clean, less safe, less fair.” To counter the “rogue president” and his supporters who, “like lemmings, will follow him over any cliff,” Dingell advises “courage and constant vigilance.” Though it may take decades to restore civility, economic justice, and governmental integrity, he offers some concrete suggestions for achieving those goals: full participation in the electoral system, elimination of money in campaigns, the protection of an independent press, and, most drastically, “the end of minority rule in our legislative and executive branches.” With no prospect of eliminating the Electoral College, Dingell advocates a grass-roots movement aimed at abolishing the Senate by combining the two chambers into one.
A hard-hitting critique of a nation “in mortal peril.”Pub Date: Dec. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-257199-1
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2018
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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