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LANDSLIDE

Name: LANDSLIDE
Author: Jonathan Darman
ISBN: 978-1-4000-6708-4

LBJ AND RONALD REAGAN AT THE DAWN OF A NEW AMERICA

by Jonathan Darman ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 23, 2014

Ambitious, studious portraits pulled together nicely by Darman.

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An intimate chronicle of the 1,000 days after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, during which there was a sea change in the American electorate.

President Lyndon B. Johnson and Ronald Reagan both enjoyed huge election landslides, the former in his 1964 re-election bid as the standard bearer of the Great Society programs and the latter leading the conservative backlash in his defeat of Pat Brown as governor of California in 1966. In this sympathetic dual character study, former Newsweek correspondent Darman focuses on these two savvy politicians, who managed to capture the prevailing public mood and convince the voters that the best was yet to come—either for the progressive cause or the less-government-is-better platform, respectively—during a time of wrenching change in American society. Despite the prevailing shock and gloom that ensued after the assassination, LBJ, the depressed vice president largely ignored by Kennedy’s administration, was galvanized by a sense of duty and legacy, becoming the “Man-in-Motion” who effected a staggering number of progressive achievements in the spirit of the dead president: civil rights legislation, poverty alleviation and education reform, Medicare and voting rights, among others. In his accomplishments during his first 100 days of office, LBJ rivaled those of FDR. Soon after, however, everything began to unravel, sowing a sense of anxiety within the country: the racial confrontation on the Selma, Alabama, Edmund Pettus Bridge; escalation of the Vietnam War; and the Watts riots. Although LBJ had crushed Barry Goldwater, the conservatives gained new impetus in Reagan’s more appealingly packaged, moderate, yet still-hard-hitting anti-government speeches. The author masterfully conveys LBJ’s agony, as well as former actor Reagan’s free-wheeling spirit: He was the “Errol Flynn of the B movies” who had aged out of his previous roles and needed a new gig as an American hero.

Ambitious, studious portraits pulled together nicely by Darman.

Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2014

ISBN: 978-1-4000-6708-4

Page Count: 496

Publisher: Random House

Review Posted Online: June 16, 2014

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2014

Categories:

- PROFILES
Jonathan Darman

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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.